ABSTRACT
With increasing concern about cost reduction and environmental destruction, lightweight structural design is essential in the product design process. As a means of yielding products with more lightweight and efficient structures, in this paper a method of extracting useful features from a biological lightweight structure, that of the American lobster is proposed. Tensile tests were conducted on biological specimens using plastic clamps made by a 3D printer and clarified some rules for the design of lightweight and efficient structures. Using the rules of material design, a novel method for acquiring bio-inspired lightweight designs was proposed and its feasibility was shown by FEM simulation.
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
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ORCID
Satsuki Tsunenari http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8238-9544
Tetsuo Oya http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1096-2054