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Function-Based Biologically Inspired Design

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Biologically Inspired Design

Abstract

A “big picture” approach to a systematic, function-based (drawing from a Pahl and Beitz approach) biologically inspired design is presented in this chapter. The approach supports two different starting, or perhaps motivating, points: a customer need motivated product design and a biological system motivated product opportunity. Both approaches rely on a designer’s ability to create a functional model that either captures customer needs or represents the biological system of interest. This methodology relies directly on the designer’s ability to make connections between dissimilar domain information. Following presentation of the methodology are two validation approaches. One examines current biologically inspired products either in production or presented in the literature to demonstrate that the systematic design methodology for biologically inspired design can reproduce the existing design. The second validation exercise investigates three needs–based design problems that lead to plausible biologically inspired solutions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA

    Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel

  2. School of Mechanical Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Robert B. Stone

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Daniel A. McAdams

Authors
  1. Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel
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  2. Robert B. Stone
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  3. Daniel A. McAdams
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, 30332, USA

    Ashok K Goel

  2. , Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, 411 Mechanical Engineering Office,3123 TAMU, College Station, 77843-3123, USA

    Daniel A McAdams

  3. , School of Mechanical, Industrial, and, Oregon State University, 204 Rogers Hall, Corvallis, 97331, USA

    Robert B. Stone

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Nagel, J.K.S., Stone, R.B., McAdams, D.A. (2014). Function-Based Biologically Inspired Design. In: Goel, A., McAdams, D., Stone, R. (eds) Biologically Inspired Design. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5248-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5248-4_5

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-5248-4

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