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Cars mimicking nature is no bird-brained idea
Yet that oversized schnozz accounts for just five per cent of the creature's mass. It's a triumph of natural engineering; a light, tough material that absorbs a great amount of impact energy.
The beak's outer layer is keratin protein, like our fingernails, arranged in overlapping six-sided plates held by natural glue. Inside, a foam-like structure of struts and membranes creates thousands of tiny air pockets.
It sounds like a promising technique for making car body panels.
Most insects have a protein called resilin in their leg and wing joints. It absorbs 99.9 per cent of the energy when it's compressed.
It might be ideal for bumpers and crumple zones.
This is futuristic stuff for the car industry, but perhaps not that far off. It's called biomimicry and it involves figuring out how nature accomplishes tasks and then applies that knowledge to things we make, including vehicles.
The key idea is that things living in nature must be supremely efficient because materials and energy are precious and waste is a fatal luxury. "If a design strategy is not effective, its carrier dies," says Tim McGee, a researcher with an American group called the Biomimicry Guild. As a result, "nature has solved a lot of problems of optimizing energy use."
We humans are, of course, part of the natural world. But as we've taken construction of things into our own hands, we've let go of that basic rule.
Exhibit A is the car – a heavy, awkwardly shaped device, with an engine that uses less than a fifth of the energy in its fuel. It works, but at a cost in resources that would make it a candidate for quick extinction out in the wild.
Biomimicry experts research how plants and animals survive in an environment that chews up and spits out mistakes.
As I've written before, cars must change radically if Earth is to tolerate the expected massive increase in numbers. One step involves bioplastics, which incorporate wheat straw, wood chips and other plant material into plastics. Biomimcry goes further, using nature's materials, structures and shapes.
A few years ago, Mercedes-Benz built a "boxfish car," based on a coral reef fish that, despite its apparently square shape, is extremely aerodynamic and stable. The creature requires both qualities to swim reasonably fast and to stay immobile in a swift current.
Benz created a model of the fish, which had a drag coefficient of just .06. Translated into a concept car, it achieved a still-impressive 0.19.
The latest version of the Toyota Prius – reputedly the slipperiest mainstream vehicle on the road – measures 0.25 in the wind tunnel.
The boxfish is covered with hexagonal plates like those that serve the toucan so well. Benz engineers managed an approximation, which cut the weight by one-third without losing strength or rigidity.
The four-seat compact consumed a mere 3.35 litres of gas per 100 kilometres. Improving aerodynamics and cutting weight are among the best ways to green vehicles. Whether internal combustion, battery powered or fuel cell, the less the engine lugs around, the less fuel or energy it will consume.
A lot of work is under way to uncover, and use, nature's secrets, McGee says. The idea hasn't seeped very far into the car industry, but it seems only a matter of time. After all, bits of biomimicry are becoming commonplace.
One example: microscopic bumps keep dirt from getting a grip on lotus leaves. Rain washes it away. The principle is already applied to self-cleaning windows for buildings, and for metal finishes. Why not windshields and body finishes?
For a start.
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