GENERALIZING THE BIOMIMETIC DESIGN PROCESS

While many elegant solutions to engineering problems have been inspired by biological phenomena, it is not always clear how the particular biological phenomena were selected. The objective of this work is to develop a generalized methodology by which analogous biological phenomena can be identified and used for any design problem in a systematic manner. The chosen approach has been implemented in a computer search tool that locates in a biology text, instances of functional keywords describing the engineering problem. Analogies for case studies in design for remanufacture and microassembly as well as ongoing work will be summarized.

USING BIOLOGICAL ANALOGIES FOR ENGINEERING PROBLEM SOLVING AND DESIGN

This paper summarizes various aspects of identifying and using biological analogies in engineering design. To avoid the immense as well as potentially biased task of creating a database specifically for this purpose, the chosen approach searches biological knowledge in natural language format, e.g., books, papers, etc., for instances of functional keywords describing the engineering problem. Strategies developed to facilitate this search as well how text descriptions of biological phenomena were used in problem solving are summarized. Case studies in design for remanufacture and microassembly are used to provide an overview of the method.