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| Thursday, September
26, 2002 |
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Princeton to help
new engineering effort based on
'bioinspriation'
By
JOSHUA TAUBERER
Princetonian Senior
Writer
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| Courtesy of
IBIM |
| The new institute will
study biomimetics -- the unique properties of biological
materials -- and try to recreate those properties in
synthetic materials. | In an effort that
may make today's science fiction tomorrow's reality, NASA has
asked Princeton and other universities to investigate how to
make materials more like living things. The new Institute for
Biologically Inspired Materials, led by University professor
Ilhan Aksay, was inaugurated yesterday at its first planning
workshop.
IBIM's 30-some
professors from five schools will be studying biomimetics
— the unique properties of biological materials
— and trying to recreate those properties in synthetic
materials.
Bone, for instance,
heals itself — something no man-made material can
do.
Airplane wings use
hydraulics to raise and lower the flaps that help control the
airplane, yet birds do not need such heavy
equipment.
"Next generation
spacecrafts should mimic the functions of birds or biological
systems better than what the present airplanes do," Aksay
said.
Living cells are
adept at creating polymer-ceramic composites, such as bone
tissue, which are not easily created synthetically, University
professor Jeffrey Carbeck said. A man-made material that is
both flexible and strong — like bone — would be very
desirable for aerospace
engineering.
Carbeck said he
has focused much of his recent research on chemical biology.
For example, he found that fibroblast cells become active in
healing damaged tissue in response to particular formations of
deposited protein. The cells then pull the wound closed and
secrete collagen.
It is natural
structures and processes like these that Aksay said he hopes
will inspire his team — as he calls it,
"bioinspiration."
Materials may
one day be able to "respond in an active way by sealing cracks
before they become catastrophic," Carbeck
said.
Aksay said that a weak
electrohydrodynamic flow around a damaged material can attract
particles to a hole. The particles can plug the hole in the
same way blood cells form a clot.
Another application
of biomimetics, Carbeck said, is creating materials that
respond dynamically to forces applied to them. Bones naturally
detect stresses and become stronger in the most stressed
regions. A man-made material that can respond this way,
Carbeck said, is not only theoretically possible but perhaps
not as complex as most researchers
believe.
Bones are also
multifunctional. In addition to providing strength, they store
energy and contribute to the immune system. Ideally, Carbeck
said, NASA wants materials like bones — structural, light
weight and self
healing.
Carbeck said that as
with materials research in the past, IBIM research will likely
involve undergraduate seniors because many aspects of this new
frontier have not been widely explored and can prove
unpredictable. Many avenues will prove fruitless, Carbeck
said, making some projects unsuitable for a graduate student's
fouror five-year commitment to a
plan.
Carbeck added that
undergraduate seniors often have the interdisciplinary
interests necessary for biomimetic materials
research.
Aksay said the
beginnings of IBIM were in a seminar he gave to NASA's Langley
Research Center more than two years ago on biomimetics.
Langley's researchers became excited about biomimetic
materials' prospects and then formed blueprints of next
generation space structures incorporating the yet-unfound
results of biomimetic research. Aksay called it "Jules Verne
type thinking." That convinced NASA to provide Langley with
funding for the research.
Roughly two dozen
teams of universities competed for the opportunity to work
with Langley.
"Our team has a
proven track record," Aksay
said.
The winning team includes
Princeton, which Aksay said is now one of the leaders in the
materials research world, the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, Northwestern University and the University of
California at Santa
Barbara.
Aksay said each
university brings a different specialty. UCSB focus will be on
the molecular biology side, "functions of the biological
systems." Princeton's contribution will be in the engineering
of nanocomposites, he
said.
IBIM will also work with
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University on
an education and training
program.
Carbeck said as early
as in the next few years IBIM could find ways to create
materials with some form of these biologically inspired
properties. But self-healing and self-adapting materials are
still a ways off, he said.
In other news:
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