Adhesive abilities of insects, spiders and reptiles have inspired researchers for a long time. All these organisms show outstanding performance, particularly for force, adhesion and climbing abilities, relative to their size and weight. Scientists have focused on the gecko’s adhesive paw system and climbing abilities. Its adhesion mechanism has been an important topic of research for nearly 150 years. However, certain phenomena of geckos are still not fully understood and represent today the main challenge in several scientific discussions that aim to better understand their adhesive ability. The manuscript deals with the influence of surface roughness on the gecko’s adhesion on the inverted surface of Poly(methyl meth-acrylate) (PMMA) and glass, of PMMA with different surface roughness, on the gecko’s maximum normal adhesive force. In general, the adhesive structure and mechanism of an animal could be connected to the micro-structured roughness of natural substrata (e.g. plant surfaces) in the natural environment. This manuscript focuses on the nanometer scale, which is involved in everything from gecko spatulae to the waxy nanotubules of the lotus leaf, to the fibroin protein materials that constitute spider silks. In general, spider silks display superior mechanical properties, but only in the last few decades, researchers investigated various types of silks and evaluated their very different mechanical properties. The dragline and the flag silks (or radial and circumferential) of orb weaving spiders have been characterized in scientific literature while, to our knowledge, few studies have been conducted on bundles, which connect the cocoons of Meta menardi to the ceiling of caves.

The current book contains eight commissioned chapters and cover topics including stress distribution and design analysis of adhesively bonded tubular composite joints; durability of structural adhesive joints; mechanical surface treatment of adherends for adhesive bonding; surface modification of polymer materials by excimer UV light; corona discharge treatment of materials to enhance adhesion; adhesion activation of aramid fibers; dual-cured hydrogels for bioadhesives and biomedical applications; and non-adhesive SLIPS-like surfaces.

The thesis systematically investigates the factors which influence many animals’ robust adhesion abilities and micro-reversible adhesion mechanisms, including the geometric principles of their adhesion, relative humidity, surface roughness and pre-tension. Studies exploring biological adhesion mechanisms are not only of great significance for the design of advanced adhesive materials and adhesion systems for micro-climbing robots, but also very helpful for resolving the problem of adhesion failure in MEMS/NEMS.

Challenges and Recent Advances in Sustainable Oil and Gas Recovery and Transportation delivers a critical tool for today's petroleum and reservoir engineers to learn the latest research in EOR and solutions toward more SDG-supported practices. Packed with methods and case studies, the reference starts with the latest advances such as EOR with polymers and EOR with CCS. Advances in shale recovery and methane production are also covered before layering on sustainability methods on critical topics such as oilfield produced water. Supported by a diverse group of contributors, this book gives engineers a go-to source for the future of oil and gas. The oil and gas industry are utilizing enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods frequently, but the industry is also tasked with making more sustainable decisions in their future operations. - Provides the latest advances in enhanced oil recovery (EOR), including EOR with polymers, EOR with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and hybrid EOR approaches - Teaches options in recovery and transport, such as shale recovery and methane production from gas hydrate reservoirs - Includes sustainability methods such as biological souring and oil field produced water solutions

The chicken bone you nibbled yesterday and threw away was a high-tech product! Not only that: it was a superlative light-weight design, functionally adapted to its mechanical requirements. No engineer in the world has, as yet, been able to copy this structural member, which is excellently optimized in its external shape and its internal architecture as regards minimum weight and maximum strength. The tree stem on which you recently carved your initials has also, by life-long care for its body, steadily improved its internal and external structure and adapted optimally to new loads. In the course of its biomechanical self-optimization it will heal up the notch you cut as speedily as possible, in order to repair even the smallest weak point, which might otherwise cost it its life in the next storm. This book is dedicated to the understanding of this biomechanical optimization of shape. It is the synthesis of many years of extensive research using the latest computer methods at the Karlsruhe Research Centre to help understand the mechanism of biological self-optimization (adaptive growth) and to simulate it by computer. The method newly developed for this purpose was called CAO (Computer-Aided Optimization). With this method, it is possible to predict the growth of trees, bones and other biological structures from the tiger's claw to the sea urchin's skeleton.

Master simple to advanced biomaterials and structures with this essential text. Featuring topics ranging from bionanoengineered materials to bio-inspired structures for spacecraft and bio-inspired robots, and covering issues such as motility, sensing, control and morphology, this highly illustrated text walks the reader through key scientific and practical engineering principles, discussing properties, applications and design. Presenting case studies for the design of materials and structures at the nano, micro, meso and macro-scales, and written by some of the leading experts on the subject, this is the ideal introduction to this emerging field for students in engineering and science as well as researchers.

Atomistic simulations, based on ab-initio and semi-empirical approaches, are nowadays widespread in many areas of physics, chemistry and, more recently, biology. Improved algorithms and increased computational power widened the areas of application of these computational methods to extended materials of technological interest, in particular allowing unprecedented access to the first-principles investigation of their electronic, optical, thermodynamical and mechanical properties, even where experiments are not available. However, for a big impact on the society, this rapidly growing field of computational approaches to materials science has to face the unfavourable scaling with the system size, and to beat the time-scale bottleneck. Indeed, many phenomena, such as crystal growth or protein folding for example, occur in a space/time scale which is normally out of reach of present simulations. Multi-scale approaches try to combine different scale algorithms along with matching procedures in order to bridge the gap between first-principles and continuum-level simulations. This Research Topic aims at the description of recent advances and applications in these two emerging fields of ab-inito and multi-scale materials modelling for both ground and excited states. A variety of theoretical and computational techniques are included along with the application of these methods to systems at increasing level of complexity, from nano to micro. Crossing the borders between several computational, theoretical and experimental techniques, this Research Topic aims to be of interest to a broad community, including experimental and theoretical physicists, chemists and engineers interested in materials research in a broad sense.