Mechanics of Organic, Implant, and Bioinspired Materials

Excerpt

The biological world has evolved a rich and diverse array of structures and materials that offer unique and desirable properties of significant interest to the engineering world. The Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) formally initiated the Biological Materials and Systems Technical Division (TD) in 2000 to investigate biological and biologically inspired materials and systems, with an emphasis on structure, property, and process relationships. However, SEM has a rich history of applying the formalisms of the field of experimental mechanics to biological materials, stretching back to a series of technical sessions and invited seminars at the 1968 SESA conference covering biomechanics and the role of experimental mechanics research in dentistry [1]. Broadly speaking the focuses within SEM—discussed at length by Brown, Peterson, and Grande-Allen [2]—are on the application of theoretical and applied mechanics to (I) the investigation of organic materials, (II) the development and characterization of implant materials, and (III) the development of new materials and structures taking inspiration from nature. Organic materials, such as wood, have long been used in structural design and the mechanical response has been a topic of extensive investigation. In recent years efforts to characterize the mechanical response of organic materials are increasingly focused on the complex structures of the human body (i.e. bone, heart/valve tissue, skin) to elucidate aspects of disease and injury in collaboration with the medical field. The advent of modern implants in the 1890s ushered in the need for new materials with very specific combinations of mechanical behavior and inert in vivo response. The demands of these materials have been constantly growing with the increased complexity of modern medical science. Starting as early as the 1980s, researchers sought means to artificially manufacture biological materials, such as bone, that could be introduced into living organisms to replace damaged tissues. Efforts to precisely recreate biological materials lead scientists and engineers to view the biological world as a source of inspiration for materials, sensors and other engineering systems. …