Biomimicry in textiles: past, present and potential. An overview

Abstract

The natural world around us provides excellent examples of functional systems built with a handful of materials. Throughout the millennia, nature has evolved to adapt and develop highly sophisticated methods to solve problems. There are numerous examples of functional surfaces, fibrous structures, structural colours, self-healing, thermal insulation, etc., which offer important lessons for the textile products of the future. This paper provides a general overview of the potential of bioinspired textile structures by highlighting a few specific examples of pertinent, inherently sustainable biological systems. Biomimetic research is a rapidly growing field and its true potential in the development of new and sustainable textiles can only be realized through interdisciplinary research rooted in a holistic understanding of nature.

Land-use and climate change risks in the Amazon and the need of a novel sustainable development paradigm

“…We are rapidly gaining understanding on how things are created in nature (materials), how organisms sense their surroundings (sensors), how they move in their environment (biomechanics and kinetics), and how they behave and function (processes) (175). In addition, there is significant innovation potential to focus on learning from the Amazon in biomimicry-enabled nanoscience, reproducing complex biological systems to solve problems on a nanomolecular scale (176,177), create environmentally friendly process and pollution prevention/remediation technologies, design bioinspired textile structures (178), aid in energy production, and provide insight in behavioral and cognition-artificial intelligence roboticapplications (179), which are in the early phase of the innovation cycle.…”

Hidden keys to survival: the type, density, pattern and functional role of emperor penguin body feathers

“…Although an early study of penguin feathers reported uniform distribution of both plumules and contour feathers in penguins as a taxonomic order [13], more recent studies omit any reference to plumules and their role in insulation [9,11,[14][15][16]. The impressive thermal qualities of penguin body feathers have prompted modelling studies and inspired potential future applications [9,14,[17][18][19][20]. However, the models in these studies attribute insulative properties of the plumage solely to the afterfeather, with no mention of plumules [9,14].…”

“…Yet this information has been perpetuated in numerous studies on heat transfer properties [9,14,24], mechanical properties [15] and feather evolution [25], and has inspired surveys and models of the potential biomimetic applications using the penguin plumage design for more effective thermal insulating materials in clothing or buildings [17][18][19][20]. However, the basic information on penguin feathers used in these studies may be inaccurate.…”

Fibre Configurations for Moisture Control: A Vernacular Framework

“…The way in which the fibres are interlinked determine the characteristics of the fabric, including its structure capacity, material behaviour and performance. A fabric is thus an assembled structure or material system that is inherently hierarchical (Eadie & Ghosh, 2011). Following an algorithmic logic, sets of elements or nested elements are repeated to generate a pattern that determines the fabric's topology.…”