Recently, an excellent book entitled Plants and Mechanical Motion – A Synthetic Approach to Nastic Materials and Structures, edited by Dr Norman M. Wereley, from the University of Maryland, and Dr Janet M. Sater, from the Institute for Defense Analyses, has been published. The book is a presentation of technologies for translating plant-like movements to new adaptive materials, with explicit reference to helicopter and aeronautic applications. It provides both the practising engineer and researcher with ample scientific and engineering information to enable application of the research results presented herein and/or the initiation of new efforts in nastic materials and structures. There are 10 chapters in the book.
Chapter 1 introduces the plant motion and mechanism studies from the earliest history up until the present time, discussing relevant features of plants with respect to their counterparts in man-made mechanical systems.
Chapters 2–5 highlight four different approaches for making synthetic nastic materials: transport protein pressurization, ion intercalation, combined electroosmosis and electromigration, and closed cell gas generation. Chapters on each of the four highlighted approaches provide relevant details including fundamental science, analytical models, test results, technical issues, devised, and potential applications etc.
Chapters 6–9 focus on the mechanics and applications of fluidic muscle actuators reminiscent of the fibrillar wall structures that plants use to achieve motion. In Chapter 10, a discussion of biomimetic design is presented, and suggestions for future activities are provided.
The book can be expected to profoundly impact research and development for nastic materials and structures. The book presents a timely and focused review of research efforts encompassing work from the most pertinent derivatives of nastic materials and structures that include energy transport strategies and the mechanics and applications of fluidic muscle-like materials bioinspired by fibrillar plant tissue. This book will ultimately serve a number of disciplines and promises to focus biological structures like plants for new avenues of biology, materials and mechanics.
Professor Jinsong Leng
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials,
Harbin Institute of Technology, Center for Composite Materials and Structures,
PO Box 3011, No. 2 YiKuang Street, HIT Science Park, Harbin 150080, PR China
© 2013, Jinsong Leng