This article aims to make it clear that innovations in surface technology can be made even without prior biological knowledge if a small supplementary component is added to the classical methods described in VDI 2221 [15-17]: namely where the functional principle or functional analogy exists in nature. Examples from metal biology are used to explain how a biological deruster has been developed bionically and how bionically developed natural iron can be selectively removed from rinsing baths after iron pickling without the need for precipitants.
1 Background
Bionics is now widely known among media professionals since Frank Elstner and Ranga Yogeshwar invited viewers to bionics game shows on Saturday evenings after the news. However, bionics is still virtually unknown in schools, universities and most companies.
There are reasons for this: The field of knowledge "biology and technology" is - supposedly - not so easy to access: biologist became woman (you couldn't spell I correctly here) because women are more nature-loving. In general terms, men tend to be more interested in technology because biological topics seem too unpredictable to them (apart from 1 + 1, there are usually 3, maybe even 4, if there are twins, there is no certainty for the result in nature; chemists do not become bio-chemists either, because stoichiometric equilibrium relationships are more important to them than flow equilibria that cannot be predicted). This means that the overlapping field is - seemingly - only open to daring biologists and technicians. In addition, in the school and training sector, many lecturers have now reached an age where it is "simply no longer worth it" to revise their curricula:
- because it costs extra time that you don't have
- because they are afraid of entering a terrain that consists only of black ice
- and you don't want to be or become a "donkey"
- and you don't really think you know anything about "biology" or women about "technology".
There is a lot of literature on innovations that have been developed bionically. However, they are always presented as if only a bionics expert could have found them in collaboration with colleagues in interdisciplinary teams. One of the best examples is the Velcro fastener, which everyone knows and uses frequently.
It was typically "found" by an occasional nature observer who was initially annoyed that his long-haired dog had been roaming through burdock bushes and now had to laboriously twist the burrs out of the fur one by one. He used this annoying time to take a closer look at the burrs and their hooking mechanism in detail. The result is well known: learned from nature and realized with a mineral oil-based plastic: Millions in profits made.
2 Understanding bionics
The term bionics, as BIOKON e.V., the umbrella organization for bionics in Germany, writes on its website [27], is made up of biology and technology. It describes the creative implementation of ideas from biology into technology. To this end, biologists work closely with engineers, architects, physicists, chemists and materials researchers.
Bionics is defined in VDI 6220 [19] as follows: Bionics combines biology and technology in interdisciplinary cooperation with the aim of solving technical problems through the abstraction, transfer and application of knowledge gained from biological models. Biological models in the sense of this definition are biological processes, materials, structures, functions, organisms and principles of success as well as the process of evolution.
Bionics is therefore a top-down method of finding innovative solutions to technical problems using evolutionarily optimized structures and processes from nature. It is not about simply copying natural models, but about identifying principles and/or functional analogies of both the technical problem and the systematic evaluation of the range of principle solutions as they can be observed in nature.
In VDI 6220 Sheet 1 [20-22], which will soon be published as a green paper, this important difference is pointed out even more clearly than before: Leonardo da Vinci was not the first bionicist, but Otto Lilienthal was, because he had modeled his gliding apparatus on the gliding flight of birds in terms of its functional principle, namely the "conversion of attitude energy into lift and propulsion". He had used birds to study how heavier-than-air bodies can glide. With the well-known "winglets" on aircraft, a functional analogy was taken from nature as to how the wingtips can be stabilized (and, as a side effect, kerosene consumption is reduced).
VDI 6220 outlines two bionic approaches that correspond to the essence of bionics (for the Surface Technology Yearbook, the focus is on "top-down", because the author is interested in looking for solutions to technical problems in nature); first, however, let's look at the bottom-up developments:
Bottom-up developments
Obvious examples of bottom-up are the "Velcro fastener" shown above and the surface structures that are certainly well known in surface technology, which were copied from the lotus leaf surface. Bottom-up therefore means that phenomena have been observed in nature that have led to functionally analogous technical products. These do not necessarily have to be of a "biological nature". It is about a principle that was observed in nature and learned from it to make the principle technically usable.
Top-down developments
are, for example, "gecko tapes" - i.e. products that create an adhesive connection that can be removed several times, similar to Velcro. Here, the question was posed from the problem (i.e. top-down): where in nature are there adhesive structures that adhere to all materials, especially those with smooth surfaces (and do not require a backing tape like Velcro) and can be removed quickly and easily without leaving any residue? The gecko was one of the models: Millions of "hairs" establish relationships with any surface (including glass, for example) via van der Waals forces that are millions of times smaller, so that a gecko weighing many 100 grams can still walk under a (glass) ceiling (incidentally, this is an example from the field of molecular bionics, see further on).
An equally good example is the development of noiseless fans, which are now installed in concert halls around the world, for example, in spotlights: In 2013, the Ziehl-Abegg company from Künzelsau looked for a model in nature and found the owl, investigated the nature of the owl's wing using all modern methods and reproduced it technically: this is how you become the world market leader.
Bionics can often be touched and understood haptically: Bionics is not as abstract as the artificial word made up of biology and technology conveys:
- you can pick up a burdock in spring and see how it rakes on a fabric
- it doesn't have to be a lotus plant, the nasturtium that grows here also uses the effect of cleaning the leaf surface when (rain) water droplets run off the surface
- you may not be able to touch an owl wing, but you can study it from a certain distance, for example in the TECHNOSEUM, Mannheim, in connection with a fan wheel or in many natural history museums
- for molecular bionics, microscopy techniques are sometimes needed to look at surface structures down to their molecular structure in order to understand them. For a surface engineer, for example, the question of why an earthworm emerges "clean" from moist, sticky soil is fascinating [26].
3 Bionics is multi-layered
BIOKON e.V. (the umbrella organization of people who are professionally involved in bionics) has 10 interdisciplinary specialist groups, in which mainly natural scientists and engineers from universities and industry have come together thematically:
- FG1 Architecture and Design
- FG2 Lightweight construction and materials
- FG3 Surfaces and interfaces
- FG4 Fluid dynamics
- FG5 Robotics and production technology
- FG6 Sensors and Information Processing
- FG7 Bionic Optimization Methods
- FG8 Organization and Management
- FG9 Education and training
- FG10 Bionic medical technology
In its status report [18] on "Life Sciences - Trends and Perspectives", the VDI highlights the following topics:
- Materials and substances
- Surface functionalization
- Molecularization
- Safe human-machine interaction
- Automation / sensor technology
Finally, at the 4th Baden-Württemberg Bionics Congress on "Automotive and Mechanical Engineering" [6] - in addition to the topic of "molecular bionics" - the author focused on 5 forums:
- Aerodynamics
- Component design and optimization
- lightweight construction
- Adhesion and non-adhesion
- robotics
The list of topics shows that natural solutions have already been sought in all areas of surface technology and have been found for a number of issues.
For example, surface technicians can take inspiration from bionic developments that have already been made, such as the bionically developed "biological rust remover" or the "enzymatic cleaner of polishing residues" [7] described in the Surface Technology Yearbook, Volume 70, or in thick volumes by Werner Nachtigall, in particular "Bionics in Examples: 250 Illustrated Approaches" [12].
Or you can look for solutions to problems in nature yourself.
4 Start-up for innovations in surface technology
The intention of this article is to provide information on how you can find solutions to technical problems in nature without any knowledge of biology or zoology. This is certainly a lot of fun if you can look at the tasks from different angles as a team. It is important to the author to convey that the method of approaching a problem is the be-all and end-all. Nature, i.e. biology or zoology or other fields of knowledge that deal with the results of evolutionary developments, only comes into play much later. Perhaps the reader has already noticed that the term "questions" is always used here and not "problems"? The reason for this is that, although problems are usually the trigger for process improvements through to new, improved products, a problem usually consists of many sub-problems that have to be broken down into individual questions, of which there is one decisive question: and an answer has to be found to this one question; if necessary, nature has already provided the answer in an evolutionarily optimized way.
The author's approach to bionic-inspired developments is therefore:
- firstly, to be fundamentally open to results!
- Secondly, to question until the "crux of the matter", i.e. the decisive core question, has been formulated in writing.
- Thirdly, to abstract the core question into a principle or function (formulated positively) and to outline a model for it.
In principle, this principle is already described in VDI 2221 [15-17] on "designing": in practice, it is not usually applied to "problems because a problem has to be solved 'quickly'. In development departments it is more likely, but there it is 'mostly' lacking in "being open to results" and one "designs the way one learned it at university".
Gorb and Voigt [2] have compiled the structures/functions and operating principles of various surfaces in Table 1 and give biological examples of where they can be found and examples of where they can be found in technical applications.
- Fourthly (this is where it gets bionic): the search - possibly with the help of an open-minded biology teacher from your children's school - begins with identifying the principle or function by analogy in nature and working out where it comes closest to the core question and where the natural analog was the template for solving the core question. You can easily do research on the Internet today: Keyword(s)
- for "functional analogy (Pudel's core)" plus
- "in nature"
- While researching possible speakers in the automotive industry for the 4th Bionics Congress Baden-Württemberg, the author was recently told several times that they had tried bionics but had failed. When asked which functional analogy had been searched for in nature, the answer was always: "Functional analogy? never heard of it!"
- Fifthly, the procedure is now classical again, in which the natural model is taken apart and analyzed using classical methods of measurement and analysis technology until the natural solution of the "abstracted model" has been deciphered.
- Sixthly, prototypes are constructed or new product mixtures are formulated, examined to see whether they are suitable in principle and optimized in the positive case (if necessary with bionic methods of CAO (Computer Aided Optimization), SKO (Soft Kill Option, better known and often used under the keyword: topology optimization) or ELiSE (Evolutionary Light Structure Engineering).
Tab. 1: Structures/functions and operating principles of various surfaces
to be continued
Literature
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[7] Kunz, P.M.; Sommer, I: Bionic developments in surface technology, Jahrbuch Oberflächentechnik Volume 70, Eugen G. Leuze Verlag, Bad Saulgau, 2014
[8] Kunz, P.M.; Monzel, M.: Biosorptive removal of iron compounds from rinsing baths in the metal industry, Project- Final Report Innovative Project of the State of Baden-Württemberg, Mannheim University of Applied Sciences, 2002
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[16] VDI 2221 Sheet 1: Development of technical products and systems - Model of product development, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Beuth-Verlag, March 2018
[17] VDI 2221 Sheet 2: Development of technical products and systems - Design of individual product development processes, draft, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Beuth-Verlag, March 2018
[18] VDI Status Report: Life Sciences - Trends and Perspectives, [1] VDI Status Report Association of German Engineers, October 2018
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[20] VDI 6220 Sheet 1: Bionics - Fundamentals, conception and strategy, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Beuth-Verlag, Gründruck 2019
[21] VDI 6221: Bionics - Bionic surfaces, Association of German Engineers, Beuth-Verlag, September 2013
[22] VDI 6223: Bionics - Bionic materials, structures and components, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Beuth-Verlag, June 2013
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[26] Zhao, H.; Sun, Q.; Deng, X.; Cui, J.: Earthworm-Inspired Rough Polymer Coatigs with Self-Replenishing Lubrication for Adaptive Friction-Reduction and Antifouling Surfaces, Advanced Materials 30, 29, 2018, 1802141
[27] http://www.biokon.de/bionik/was-ist-bionik/
