Bio-inspired design

Advances in additive manufacturing, computational design tools, and digitization techniques are converging in an exciting new era of engineering design, as humanity has never experienced before. Within this convergent domain, Bio-Inspired Design (BID) is a particularly promising area of research since the potential space for establishing structure-function correlation is vast, and the majority of it is untapped. In this chapter, bio-inspired design is first introduced, specifically in the context of the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) process. Practical approaches for implementing BID for L-PBF are discussed, followed by a discussion of key general design concepts that can be abstracted for BID. Examples of how BID and L-PBF have been combined are then presented, followed by a consideration of some of the most important design constraints posed by the L-PBF process that the bio-inspired designer needs to be aware of. The chapter concludes with a forward looking discussion of opportunities in this domain.