This book deals with an interface between mechanical engineering and biology. It reviews biological structural materials and systems and their mechanically important features and demonstrates that function at any particular level of biological integration is permitted and controlled by structure at lower levels of integration.

This book deals with an interface between mechanical engineering and biology. Available for the first time in paperback, it reviews biological structural materials and systems and their mechanically important features and demonstrates that function at any particular level of biological integration is permitted and controlled by structure at lower levels of integration. Five chapters discuss the properties of materials in general and those of biomaterials in particular. The authors examine the design of skeletal elements and discuss animal and plant systems in terms of mechanical design. In a concluding chapter they investigate organisms in their environments and the insights gained from study of the mechanical aspects of their lives.

Mechanical Design of Structural Materials in Animals explores the principles underlying how molecules interact to produce the functional attributes of biological materials: their strength and stiffness, ability to absorb and store energy, and ability to resist the fatigue that accrues through a lifetime of physical insults. These attributes play a central role in determining the size and shape of animals, the ways in which they can move, and how they interact with their environment. By showing how structural materials have been designed by evolution, John Gosline sheds important light on how animals work. Gosline elucidates the pertinent theories for how molecules are arranged into macromolecular structures and how those structures are then built up into whole organisms. In particular, Gosline develops the theory of discontinuous, fiber-reinforced composites, which he employs in a grand synthesis to explain the properties of everything from the body wall of sea anemones to spiders' silks and insect cuticles, tendons, ligaments, and bones. Although the theories are examined in depth, Gosline's elegant discussion makes them accessible to anyone with an interest in the mechanics of life. Focusing on the materials from which animals are constructed, this book answers fundamental questions about mechanical properties in nature.

Understanding materials, their properties and behavior is fundamental to engineering design, and a key application of materials science. Written for all students of engineering, materials science and design, Materials Selection in Mechanical Design describes the procedures for material selection in mechanical design in order to ensure that the most suitable materials for a given application are identified from the full range of materials and section shapes available. Extensively revised for this fourth edition, Materials Selection in Mechanical Design is recognized as one of the leading materials selection texts, and provides a unique and genuinely innovative resource. Features new to this edition: - Material property charts now in full color throughout - Significant revisions of chapters on engineering materials, processes and process selection, and selection of material and shape while retaining the book's hallmark structure and subject content - Fully revised chapters on hybrid materials and materials and the environment - Appendix on data and information for engineering materials fully updated - Revised and expanded end-of-chapter exercises and additional worked examples Materials are introduced through their properties; materials selection charts (also available on line) capture the important features of all materials, allowing rapid retrieval of information and application of selection techniques. Merit indices, combined with charts, allow optimization of the materials selection process. Sources of material property data are reviewed and approaches to their use are given. Material processing and its influence on the design are discussed. New chapters on environmental issues, industrial engineering and materials design are included, as are new worked examples, exercise materials and a separate, online Instructor's Manual. New case studies have been developed to further illustrate procedures and to add to the practical implementation of the text. - The new edition of the leading materials selection text, now with full color material property charts - Includes significant revisions of chapters on engineering materials, processes and process selection, and selection of material and shape while retaining the book's hallmark structure and subject content - Fully revised chapters on hybrid materials and materials and the environment - Appendix on data and information for engineering materials fully updated - Revised and expanded end-of-chapter exercises and additional worked examples

In a world now forced to address the issues of sustainability, environmental impact, and the widespread pollution of land and oceans with manmade materials, alternative resources must be considered for the future of the planet. A vast array of natural materials is available throughout the world with properties that are often superior to the man-made alternatives. Designing with Natural Materials fills the gap between the current scientific knowledge of the use of natural materials and product design and acts as a bridge between the two disciplines. The book serves as an introduction to natural materials within the context of design. The chapters include case studies, research, and a historical perspective. It develops ideas of designing with natural materials in specific areas and looks to the future of new biobased materials and how these will influence design. The work offers insight to designers of biobased materials across a range of different design disciplines while also providing insights to scientists on the process of design, production, and the needs of a material beyond those traditionally analyzed in the laboratory. The final chapters touch on the use of bioinspiration and biomimicry in the development and use of biobased materials and how natural design will influence both material design and products in the future. The book will be of interest to engineers, scientific researchers, professional designers, students, those working in industry who are considering using natural materials as an alternative to current unsustainable options, and anyone who has an interest in the subject.

This book examines the evolution of self-organised multicellular structures, and the remarkable transition from unicellular to multicellular life. It shows the way forward in developing new robotic entities that are versatile, cooperative and self-configuring.

The study of coelenterates is now one of the most active fields of invertebrate zoology. There are many reasons for this, and not everyone would agree on them, but certain facts stand out fairly clearly. One of them is that many of the people who study coelenterates do so simply because they are interested in the animals for their own sake. This, however, would be true for other invertebrate groups and cannot by itself explain the current boom in coelenterate work. The main reasons for all this activity seem to lie in the considerable concentration of research effort and funding into three broad, general areas of biology: marine ecology, cellular-developmental biology and neurobiology, in all of which coelenterates have a key role to play. They are the dominant organisms, or are involved in an important way, in a variety of marine habitats, of which coral reefs are only one, and this automatically ensures their claims on the attention of ecologists and marine scientists. Secondly, the convenience of hydra and some other hydroids as experimental animals has long made them a natural choice for a variety of studies on growth, nutrition, symbiosis, morphogenesis and sundry aspects of cell biology. Finally, the phylogenetic position of the coelenterates as the lowest metazoans having a nervous system makes them uniquely interesting to those neurobiologists and behaviorists who hope to gain insights into the functioning of higher nervous systems by working up from the lowest level.

Hierarchical structures are those assemblages of molecular units or their aggregates embedded within other particles or aggregates that may, in turn, be part of even larger units of increasing levels of organization. This volume reviews the state of the art of synthetic techniques and processing procedures for assembling these structures. Typical natural-occurring systems used as models for synthetic efforts and insight on properties, unusual characteristics, and potential end-use applications are identified. Suggestions are made for research and development efforts to mimic such structures for broader applications.

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the advent of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offered a revolutionary new perspective that transformed the classical neo-Darwinian, gene-centered study of evolution. In The Architecture of Evolution, Marco Tamborini demonstrates how this radical innovation was made possible by the largely forgotten study of morphology. Despite the key role morphology played in the development of evolutionary biology since the 1940s, the architecture of organisms was excluded from the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. And yet, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s and ’80s, morphologists sought to understand how organisms were built and how organismal forms could be generated and controlled. The generation of organic form was, they believed, essential to understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Tamborini explores how the development of evo-devo and the recent organismal turn in biology involved not only the work of morphologists but those outside the biological community with whom they exchanged their data, knowledge, and practices. Together with architects and engineers, they worked to establish a mathematical and theoretical basis for the study of organic form as a mode of construction, developing and reinterpreting important notions that would play a central role in the development of evolutionary developmental biology in the late 1980s. This book sheds light not only on the interdisciplinary basis for many of the key concepts in current developmental biology but also on contributions to the study of organic form outside the English-speaking world.

Nature's Machines: An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics presents the fundamental principles of biomechanics in a concise, accessible way while maintaining necessary rigor. It covers the central principles of whole-organism biomechanics as they apply across the animal and plant kingdoms, featuring brief, tightly-focused coverage that does for biologists what H. M. Frost's 1967 Introduction to Biomechanics did for physicians. Frequently encountered, basic concepts such as stress and strain, Young's modulus, force coefficients, viscosity, and Reynolds number are introduced in early chapters in a self-contained format, making them quickly available for learning and as a refresher. More sophisticated, integrative concepts such as viscoelasticity or properties of hydrostats are covered in the later chapters, where they draw on information from multiple earlier sections of the book. Animal and plant biomechanics is now a common research area widely acknowledged by organismal biologists to have broad relevance. Most of the day-to-day activities of an animal involve mechanical processes, and to the extent that organisms are shaped by adaptive evolution, many of those adaptations are constrained and channelized by mechanical properties. The similarity in body shape of a porpoise and a tuna is no coincidence. Many may feel that they have an intuitive understanding of many of the mechanical processes that affect animals and plants, but careful biomechanical analyses often yield counterintuitive results: soft, squishy kelp may be better at withstanding pounding waves during storms than hard-shelled mollusks; really small swimmers might benefit from being spherical rather than streamlined; our bones can operate without breaking for decades, whereas steel surgical implants exhibit fatigue failures in a few months if not fully supported by bone. - Offers organismal biologists and biologists in other areas a background in biomechanics to better understand the research literature and to explore the possibility of using biomechanics approaches in their own work - Provides an introductory presentation of the everyday mechanical challenges faced by animals and plants - Functions as recommended or required reading for advanced undergraduate biology majors taking courses in biomechanics, supplemental reading in a general organismal biology course, or background reading for a biomechanics seminar course