| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Biological Materials Science
|
| Presentation Title |
Stiff Morphing Beams Inspired from Fish Fins |
| Author(s) |
Saurabh Das, Prashant Kunjam, Baptiste Moling, Francois Barthelat |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Francois Barthelat |
| Abstract Scope |
Fish fins do not contain muscles, yet fish can change the shape of their fins with high precision and speed, while producing large hydrodynamics forces without collapsing. Fins are stiffened by slender structures called “rays” made of two mineralized layers that sandwich a softer collagenous core. Here we present “stiff” morphing beams inspired from the individual rays in natural fish fins. These synthetic rays are made of stiff polymeric outer beams (“hemitrichs”) connected with elastomeric ligaments which are 3-4 orders of magnitude more compliant. Combinations of experiments and models show strong nonlinear geometrical effects: The ligaments are “mechanically invisible” at small deformations, but they delay buckling and improve the stability of the ray at large deformations. We used these models and experiments to create design guidelines that can help the development of stiff morphing bioinspired structures for a variety of applications in aerospace, biomedicine, or robotics. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Biomaterials, Modeling and Simulation, Mechanical Properties |