Building with Air: How Nature's Hole-Filled Blueprints Shape Manufacturing

Building with air: How nature's hole-filled blueprints shape manufacturing

If you break open a chicken bone, you won't find a solid mass of white material inside. Instead, you will see a complex, spongelike network of tiny struts and pillars, and a lot of empty space.

Building with air – how nature’s hole-filled blueprints shape manufacturing

Engineers use structures found in nature – like the honeycomb – to create lightweight, sturdy materials. Matthew T. Rader, CC BY-NC-SAIf you break open a chicken bone, you won’t find a solid mass of white material inside. Instead, you will see a complex, spongelike network of tiny struts and pillars, and a lot of empty space. It looks fragile, yet that internal structure allows a bird’s wing to withstand high winds while remaining light enough f…