What is Biomimicry? Quite simply, it is miming Nature! One of the early examples of biomimicry was the study of birds to enable human flight. The Wright Brothers, who succeeded in flying the first heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903, allegedly derived inspiration from observations of pigeons in flight.
Even today, aircraft wing design and flight techniques are being inspired by birds and bats. The aerodynamics of streamlined design of improved Japanese high speed train Shinkansen 500 Series were modelled after the beak of kingfisher bird.
Biomimicry gets us to sustainable solutions, faster
Biomimicry is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges – For all the challenges we face, nature has a solution. We can use biomimicry to not only learn from nature’s wisdom, but also heal ourselves – and this planet – in the process. By using nature as our mentor, we get to experience the powerful healing effects it has by connecting to the natural world – while also finding empowering relief to solve these challenges together.
Circularity, sustainability, regenerative design – it all means that the things we humans make become a force for restoring air, water, and soil instead of degrading it. Nature uses structure to change functions and also uses passive forms of energy, whereas our inventions use brute force like mining ancient carbon and a multitude of harmful chemicals. We can create conditions conducive to life, just like nature does.
Our R&D cycles are slow, and climate change won’t wait – we must look to the biological blueprints that have been successful over millennia to launch groundbreaking ideas, faster. We don’t need to reinvent the strategies that are already here. We just need to learn how to adapt them. Innovators turn to biomimicry with the hope of achieving a unique product that is efficient and effective, but they often gain a deep appreciation of and connection to the natural world.
Learning from maple seeds and kingfisher birds how to channel incoming wind to address root leakage
The PowerCone by Biome Renewables is a turbine retrofit that channels incoming wind onto the blades to address root leakage, while directing more flow to outer parts of the turbine. The result is not just more power, but power from a place where no bigger blade or smarter software can find it. And where did the idea come from? PowerCone has taken a leaf from the kingfisher bird and the auto-rotating maple seeds.
The kingfisher owes its reputation to how its beak allows it to plunge through the water with barely a ripple – in effect moving the fluid around itself at a precise rate, a phenomenon known as Time-Dependant-Energy-Transfer. The PowerCone draws on these principles, directing wind from the central root section to outer radial spans of the blade and channeling it smoothly onto its surface. Further, its presence causes a local area of high pressure, nudging wind to bend radially outwards upwind of the rotor.
To increase the reach of where their seeds are planted, maple tree seeds twirl in a tornado-like vortex, creating more lift than their non-twirling counterparts. The leading edge of the seed lowers the air pressure over the top of the seed, sucking the wind of the seed upwards, giving it extra lift, or extra travel time. This leads to a prolonged arrival at the ground, and more efficient dispersal.
The lift mechanism is similar to those of insects and hovering hummingbirds who use their wings to develop a continuous air vortex, sustaining their flight. The spinning motion created by the maple seed structure sustains a lift vortex which prolongs the flight. It’s also important to note that dead (brown-coloured) seeds scatter further because they have an altered center of gravity from alive (green-coloured) seeds. This is because the center of gravity in the seed is closer to the center of lift, similar to a paper airplane that is able to fly further than its opponents.
As a maple seed falls to the ground, it moves through the air with a pattern of least resistance, following its coning angle. This allows the maple seed to deal with turbulent air by interacting with the flow over a longer time-span, at some acute angle to the incoming flow. The PowerCone’s blades follow the seed’s elegant cues: relying on the same principles of Time-Dependant-Energy-Transfer, absorbing gusts and reducing loads. This geometry also allows the PowerCone to increase the effective flow velocity on the blade by wrapping around the wind turbine’s blades – increasing torque, decreasing cut-in speeds, and increasing the turbine’s capacity factor.
Janine Benyus, innovation inspired by Nature
“When we look at what is truly sustainable, the only real model that has worked over long periods of time is the natural world,” said Janine Benyus. Janine, co-founder, Biomimicry Institute, is a biologist, author, innovation consultant, and self proclaimed “nature nerd.” She may not have coined the term biomimicry, but she certainly popularised it in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (grab the book if you can, it is available on Amazon India). First published in 1997, this profound book details how science is studying nature’s best ideas to solve our toughest 21st-century problems.
In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that emulates nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves) to create a healthier, more sustainable planet. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine has evolved the practice of biomimicry, speaking around the world about what we can learn from the genius that surrounds us.
In 1998, Janine co-founded the world’s first bio-inspired consultancy, Biomimicry 3.8 (formerly the Biomimicry Guild), bringing nature’s sustainable designs to 250+ clients including Boeing, Colgate-Palmolive, Nike, General Electric, Herman Miller, HOK architects, IDEO, Interface, Natura, Procter and Gamble, Levi’s, Kohler and General Mills.
In 2006, she co-founded the Biomimicry Institute, a non-profit dedicated to making biology a natural part of the design process. The Institute hosts annual global biomimicry design challenges on massive sustainability problems, mobilising tens of thousands of students and practitioners through the Global Biomimicry Network to solve those challenges, and providing those practitioners with the world’s most comprehensive biomimicry inspiration database, AskNature, to use as a starting place.
Source: Biomimicry Institute
