Bioinspired Designs for Lightweighting, a Critical Review for Manufacturing

The design and manufacturing of lightweight structures (also termed lightweighting) are essential for many industrial applications to reduce material and energy consumption, impacting industries from automobiles to aerospace. Through millions of years of evolution, biology has utilized intricate designs and materials that are both lightweight and strong as a part of evolution, enabling organisms to adapt efficiently to their environments and providing a library of lightweighting approaches. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of biological design strategies for lightweighting. The authors introduce a biological design toolbox for lightweighting, a modular list of design attributes biological species utilize to develop lightweight structures. Selected representative lightweight biological examples and the fundamental science governing their design strategies are analyzed and discussed using the design toolbox, which could be applied in manufacturing engineered parts and systems. Their corresponding simulated and/or manufactured designs were also studied to highlight the gaps and opportunity space in the current bio-inspired design practices. To address these gaps, a holistic bio-inspired design framework for lightweighting is proposed as a part of future research based on the critical analysis of the design toolbox for lightweighting.