Bio-inspired design of ultra-compliant lattice structures

Nature is the ultimate testing ground and source of inspiration for many engineering principles. In our latest collaboration with Prof. Dhruv Bhate from Arizona State University and further colleagues from the U.S., the interwoven architecture of the Venus’ flower basket sea sponge’s exoskeleton served as a prototype for 3D printed lattice structures. We investigated computationally and experimentally how decoupling of nodes in lattices can influence their mechanical behavior and drastically increase their compliance.

The corresponding article was recently published in Nature portfolio's journal “Communications Materials”: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43246-023-00363-6

Furthermore, ASU reported a news about it:
https://fullcircle.asu.edu/research/sea-sponge-skeleton-sparks-innovative-engineering-designs/