‘Eel ply’ fabrics: Fish skin as a biological textile model for new material design
Marine biological materials provide a wealth of high-performing sources for inspiration: anti-fouling coatings, high toughness scaffolds, brilliant structural colors and self-healing threads. Fish scales, in particular, have offered much fodder for biomimicry, particularly heavily armored or fast-swimming species as inspiration for protective or hydrodynamic surfaces. Curiously, freshwater eels exhibit none of the most-mimicked anatomies, neither stout interlocking scutes nor scales closely overlapping like roof tiles. Eel scales, instead, have a unique scale morphology and arrangement, more like a cross-ply fabric than a scalation (Fig. 1). We believe this drives the interesting mechanical properties of eel skin, particularly relevant for ‘non-crimp fabric’ designs and low-friction, dynamic shielding/coatings. The proposed collaboration leverages biology, materials and design approaches to characterize skin of local freshwater eels, bridging local universities, to develop an area of strength in biological tissue mechanics as a platform for biomimicked textiles, novel material discovery and translation.
Marine biological materials provide a wealth of high-performing sources for inspiration: anti-fouling coatings, high toughness scaffolds, brilliant structural colors and self-healing threads. Fish scales, in particular, have offered much fodder for biomimicry, particularly heavily armored or fast-swimming species as inspiration for protective or hydrodynamic surfaces. Curiously, freshwater eels exhibit none of the most-mimicked anatomies, neither stout interlocking scutes nor scales closely overlapping like roof tiles. Eel scales, instead, have a unique scale morphology and arrangement, more like a cross-ply fabric than a scalation (Fig. 1). We believe this drives the interesting mechanical properties of eel skin, particularly relevant for ‘non-crimp fabric’ designs and low-friction, dynamic shielding/coatings. The proposed collaboration leverages biology, materials and design approaches to characterize skin of local freshwater eels, bridging local universities, to develop an area of strength in biological tissue mechanics as a platform for biomimicked textiles, novel material discovery and translation.
- 2024
- Grantee: Mason Dean
Mason Dean is a marine biologist, zoologist and anatomist, studying skeletal development, structure and function in vertebrate animals, but with a particular focus on (and affection for)
sharks and rays. He is currently an Associate Professor at CityU in Hong Kong, as well as a Guest Scientist at in the Department of Biomaterials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and
Interfaces (where he previously led a research workgroup) and an Associate Investigator in the Humboldt University’s Excellence Cluster ‘Matters of Activity’, collaborating with designers,
engineers and architects to study anatomy.
- Organisation: Dean Lab’s Comparative Anatomy group
Our collaborative workgroup brings together biologists, materials scientists and engineers from the Dean Lab’s Comparative Anatomy group at City University of Hong Kong and the Materials
Engineering Laboratory of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. Coming from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, we converge on an excitement for hierarchical and multifunctional biological architectures and what they can teach us. Our DesignTrust project is therefore a meeting point, for exploring anatomy and imaging in modern creative contexts; for examining the drivers and trade-offs in evolution; and for guiding novel approaches in engineering, architecture and bioinspired design, where
natural solutions often prove unexpectedly useful.