{"id":4203,"date":"2015-05-18T06:18:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T06:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2015-05-18T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T06:18:09","slug":"translating-thought-to-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/translating-thought-to-print\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating thought to print"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers explore mechanics of silk to design materials with high strength and low density.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"MIT-CEE-silk-1_0\"<\/a>Spider silk has long been noted for its graceful structure, as well as its advanced material properties: Ounce for ounce, it is stronger than steel.<\/span><\/p>\n

MIT research has explained some of the material\u2019s mysteries, which could help design synthetic resources that mimic the extraordinary properties of natural silk. Now, scientists at MIT have developed a systematic approach to research its structure, blending computational modeling and mechanical analysis to 3D-print synthetic spider webs. These models offer insight into how spiders optimize their own webs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first methodical exploration of its kind,\u201d says Professor Markus Buehler, head of MIT\u2019s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), and the lead author of a paper appearing this week in\u00a0Nature Communications<\/em>. \u201cWe are looking to expand our knowledge of the function of natural webs in a systematic and repeatable manner.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Coupling multiscale modeling with emerging microscale 3D-printing techniques, the team enabled a pathway to directly fabricate and test synthetic web structures by design. The lessons learned through this approach may help harness spider silk\u2019s strength for other uses, and ultimately inspire engineers to digitally design new structures and composites that are reliable and damage-resistant.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper was written by Buehler, along with CEE research scientist Zhao Qin, Harvard University professor Jennifer Lewis, and former Harvard postdoc Brett Compton.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further unraveling the mysteries of spider silk<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The study unearths a significant relationship between spider web structure, loading points, and failure mechanisms. By adjusting the material distribution throughout an entire web, a spider is able to optimize the web\u2019s strength for its anticipated prey.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team, adopting an experimental setup, used metal structures to 3D-print synthetic webs, and directly integrate their data into models. \u201cUltimately we merged the physical with the computational in our experiments,\u201d Buehler says.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Buehler, spider webs employ a limited amount of material to capture prey of different sizes. He and his colleagues hope to use this work to design real-world, damage-resistant materials of lower density.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 3D-printed models, Lewis says, open the door to studying the effects of web architecture on strength and damage tolerance \u2014 a feat that would have been impossible to achieve using only natural spider webs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSpider silk is an impressive and fascinating material,\u201d she says. \u201cBut before now, the role of the web architecture had not yet been fully explored.\u201d To investigate the geometric aspects of spider webs through the use of a similar material to silk that can be 3D-printed with uniform mechanical properties was Lewis\u2019 mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buehler\u2019s team used orb-weaver spider webs as the inspiration for their 3-D designs. In each of their samples, they controlled the diameter of the thread as a method of comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous thread thickness.<\/span><\/p>\n

In simulation, the team created \u201cthe ideal environment to test and optimize the web structures\u201d under different loading conditions, and then use synthetic materials to print identical webs, Qin says. \u201cWe are on the way to quantifying the mechanism that makes the spider\u2019s web so strong,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

The work revealed that spider webs consisting of uniform thread diameters are better suited to bear force applied at a single point, such as the impact coming from flies hitting webs; a nonuniform diameter can withstand more widespread pressure, such as from wind, rain, or gravity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The combination of computational modeling and 3D-printing makes it possible to test and optimize designs efficiently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lewis says that the team now plans to examine the dynamic aspects of webs through controlled impact and vibration experiments. This, she says, will change the printed material\u2019s properties in real time, opening the door to printing optimized, multifunctional structures.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers explore mechanics of silk to design materials with high strength and low density. Spider silk has long been noted for its graceful structure, as well as its advanced material properties: Ounce for ounce, it is stronger than steel. MIT research has explained some of the material\u2019s mysteries, which could help design synthetic resources that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",228,152,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MIT-CEE-silk-1_01.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}