Bionics by Examples Werner Nachtigall • Alfred Wisser
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Bionics by Examples Werner Nachtigall • Alfred Wisser Bionics by Examples 250 Scenarios from Classical to Modern Times 123 Werner Nachtigall Alfred Wisser Scheidt Natural Sciences and Technology III Germany Department 8.3 Saarland University Saarbrücken Germany This book was originally published in German (2013) under the title “Bionik in Beispielen” ISBN 978-3-319-05857-3 ISBN 978-3-319-05858-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05858-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014949619 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. 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Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) „The manner in which BIONICS will To Martha and mark its greatest contribution is through Christa. the revolutionary impact of a whole new set of concepts …” J.E. Steele (1960) Preliminary remarks Of all good matters are three. In the second edition of the book: “BIONIK - Grundlagen und Beispiele für Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler“ written by W. Nachtigall that appeared in 2002, the field of bionics was introduced for the first time in a wide summary, delimited and classified. In the meantime, the bionics has developed in the way of its proceeding as well as according to the large number of its attempts. On the one hand , it was therefore necessary to summarise the scientific proceeding – from understanding over abstraction towards technical realisation – and to support it. This happened in 2009 with the second book of the bionics trilogy: “Bionik als Wis- senschaft“, also written by W. Nachtigall. On the other side the danger exists that bionics is reduced in public, but also in the bio- and technical sciences, on always the same, though highly significant, but also amply wide-stepped examples, like the lotus effect or the shark scale effect. Howev- er, bionic research and technical application run at many places, often not so spec- tacularly, but just already on a very wide base. Therefore, it seemed necessary to present an example collection arranged after bionic sub-areas. It should reflect the huge number of the approaches, already presented, work out the wide base of bion- ics, and thus sensitise the public opinion to the importance of this discipline. The third book in this trilogy should take over these duties. Thus, the appealed trilogy presents itself as follows: 1.) BIONIK - Grundlagen und Beispiele für Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler (1998) 2.) BIONIK als Wissenschaft - Erkennen - Abstrahieren – Umsetzen (2010) 3.) BIONIK in Beispielen - 250 illustrierte Ansätze (2013) Since W.N. has dealt many years of his life with technical biology and bionics (and now, as well-meaning people say, has a lot of time for the study of literature as an emeritus), the herewith-completed trilogy should also show a final summary from his view. It should help - as many of his preceding publications - to fix the “right learning from nature to technology“farther in science and society. We always understand bi- onic work in the strict scientific sense. The representation closes also bionics as a science from dubious methodical attempts and esoteric fare dodgers. Our book should also strengthen the term "Bionics". We feel the trend to replace the well-introduced term "Bionics" in the German language area with the Anglo-Saxon term "Biomimetics". This happens without need, so to speak, in advanced obedience what concerns a blurred aimed „international harmonisation“, because the term of "bionics" would be taken also negatively in English speaking countries. However, "Mimetic" (μίμησις) means "imitation", and we do not want to copy the nature, but just VIII Preliminary remarks work out her principles and integrate this “lege artis” into the engineer's sciences. There is no shorter and clearer (and in addition very well introduced) term, which ex- presses this way of proceeding, as the term "bionics". Thus manifold correspondences, reprints, magazine articles and book representa- tions as well as notes, recordings and report volumes have been sift through for this final volume by conferences and congresses and own works and for the newer as- pects of course in vast manner the Internet. W.N. has carried out many bionics meet- ings as founder and long-standing leader of the Society for Technical Biology and Bi- onics (GTBB) and published the Saarbrücken BIONA-reports first as editor, then as a co-editor with A.W. as editor. Meanwhile the number of the bionics conferences has increased. The literature is already extensive, so that we had to select typical exam- ples. This happened according to the following criteria: 1.) Attempts, which are already transformed in products capable of market or available or, nevertheless, patents. 2.) Attempts, which are not transformed yet, however, open promising new territo- ries. 3.) Attempts of rather technical-biological kind, which show, however, a certain power for later conversion. First, it was our intention to consider only newer works, selected according to the subtitle “Newer examples”. Then, however, many attempts, which one expects in such an example collection, would necessarily be neglected. The exceptionally known lotus effect, for example, would have been 10 years ago absolutely a candi- date for this subtitle. Today it belongs already to the classical period, just as the up to now most important development in this field, the evolution strategy. Therefore, can we leave out both bionic examples? Finally, from these and similar reasons we have forced ourselves, then to take up already the most important "pre-classical" and "classical" examples with. Thus, the collection has become also a sort of guide by the history of the development of the bionics. However, at least in the segment "modern age", new examples predominate, partly also those which have been known only shortly before the publication of this book or of which we were told by the authors. For the arrangement of the examples, we have taken over the proven and extensive- ly accepted gradation from the first mentioned book. Nevertheless, we have intro- duced a further aspect on the border to the biotechnology in addition, namely the technical use of organic materials including energy plants. The number of the present bionic attempts is worldwide around some thousands. 250 examples given here explain indeed less than 10 % of all attempts. Anyway, it was tried to indicate attempts from the whole area of bionics. However, personal predilec- tions and focuses cannot be completely dammed. Moreover, there is a line of branches, which have "moulted" long ago to independent disciplines. They are repre- sented here only with few typical examples (cf. the table of contents). For the representation, we have used a uniform box pattern, for every example a sin- gle side. This pattern encloses generally: Heading, two pictures (biological and tech- Preliminary remarks IX nical), the principle, biology, abstraction, application, and literature. Because only maximum seven lines are available for the bigger boxes, the distillation of a longer work on the most essential connections was often an osseous work, particularly as these seven lines should nicely fill the completely small box in the flush setting also. However, this has the advantage for the reader that he finds the real essentials of a bionic attempt in brief. The literature given can serve for the more detailed checking up. They come, where possibly, from simple accessible magazines. Pictures and oc- casional quotations come, as a rule, from the first-cited work. We have split the work on the book in the following way: W.N. has met the first choice, has written the texts, and has selected the pictures; A.W. has taken all duties, which deal with the layout of the pictures and pages, the Internet search for the new- est examples up to the project management. Our last corporate work was „Biolo- gisches Design – Systematischer Katalog für bionisches Gestalten“, which appeared in the Springer publishing company. In the initial-phase, Dr. habil. Claus Ascheron of the Springer publishing company has accompanied the project and in the final phase, it has been in charge of Dr. Dipl.- Phys. Vera Spillner of the Springer/Spektrum publishing company. The authors thank the mentioned for the pleasant cooperation.