Tag Archives: Denise Brehm

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and bony 3D printing

Markus Buehler (last mentioned here in a Nov. 28, 2012 posting*, about spider silk and music) and his research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been inspired by various biomaterials to create materials that resemble bone matter, from the June 17, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

Researchers working to design new materials that are durable, lightweight and environmentally sustainable are increasingly looking to natural composites, such as bone, for inspiration: Bone is strong and tough because its two constituent materials, soft collagen protein and stiff hydroxyapatite mineral, are arranged in complex hierarchical patterns that change at every scale of the composite, from the micro up to the macro.

Now researchers at MIT have developed an approach that allows them to turn their designs into reality. In just a few hours, they can move directly from a multiscale computer model of a synthetic material to the creation of physical samples.

In a paper published online June 17 in Advanced Functional Materials, associate professor Markus Buehler of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-authors describe their approach.

The June 17, 2013 MIT news release by Denise Brehm, which originated the news item, explains the researchers’ approach in more detail (Note: A link has been removed),

The collagen in bone is too soft and stretchy to serve as a structural material, and the mineral hydroxyapatite is brittle and prone to fracturing. Yet when the two combine, they form a remarkable composite capable of providing skeletal support for the human body. The hierarchical patterns help bone withstand fracturing by dissipating energy and distributing damage over a larger area, rather than letting the material fail at a single point.

“The geometric patterns we used in the synthetic materials are based on those seen in natural materials like bone or nacre, but also include new designs that do not exist in nature,” says Buehler, who has done extensive research on the molecular structure and fracture behavior of biomaterials. His co-authors are graduate students Leon Dimas and Graham Bratzel, and Ido Eylon of the 3-D printer manufacturer Stratasys. “As engineers we are no longer limited to the natural patterns. We can design our own, which may perform even better than the ones that already exist.”

The researchers created three synthetic composite materials, each of which is one-eighth inch thick and about 5-by-7 inches in size. The first sample simulates the mechanical properties of bone and nacre (also known as mother of pearl). This synthetic has a microscopic pattern that looks like a staggered brick-and-mortar wall: A soft black polymer works as the mortar, and a stiff blue polymer forms the bricks. Another composite simulates the mineral calcite, with an inverted brick-and-mortar pattern featuring soft bricks enclosed in stiff polymer cells. The third composite has a diamond pattern resembling snakeskin. This one was tailored specifically to improve upon one aspect of bone’s ability to shift and spread damage.

The scientists are hinting that they’ve improved on nature and that may be so but I recall reading similar suggestions in studies I’ve read about 19th and 20th century research. It seems to me that scientists have claimed to be improving on nature for quite some time.

Interestingly, the suggested application for this new material is not biomedical, from the news release,

According to Buehler, the process could be scaled up to provide a cost-effective means of manufacturing materials that consist of two or more constituents, arranged in patterns of any variation imaginable and tailored for specific functions in different parts of a structure. He hopes that eventually entire buildings might be printed with optimized materials that incorporate electrical circuits, plumbing and energy harvesting. “The possibilities seem endless, as we are just beginning to push the limits of the kind of geometric features and material combinations we can print,” Buehler says.

You can find a link to and a citation for the published paper at the end of the ScienceDaily June 17, 2013 news item.

* Date changed from 2013 to 2012 on June 4, 2014

Music, math, and spiderwebs

I pricked up my ears when I saw the word ‘analogy’. As a writer, I tend to be quite interested in analogies and metaphors, especially as they relate to science. I certainly never expected to find an analogy established by mathematical rigour—it never occurred to the poet in my soul. Thankfully, mathematicians at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) were not constrained by my lack of imagination. From the Dec. 8, 2011 news item written by Denise Brehm on Nanowerk,

Using a new mathematical methodology, researchers at MIT have created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each relates to its function in an equivalent way.

The step-by-step comparison begins with the primary building blocks of each item — an amino acid and a sound wave — and moves up to the level of a beta sheet nanocomposite (the secondary structure of a protein consisting of repeated hierarchical patterns) and a musical riff (a repeated pattern of notes or chords). The study explains that structural patterns are directly related to the functional properties of lightweight strength in the spider silk and, in the riff, sonic tension that creates an emotional response in the listener.

The Dec. 8, 2011 news release at MIT goes on to explain,

While likening spider silk to musical composition may appear to be more novelty than breakthrough, the methodology behind it represents a new approach to comparing research findings from disparate scientific fields. Such analogies could help engineers develop materials that make use of the repeating patterns of simple building blocks found in many biological materials that, like spider silk, are lightweight yet extremely failure-resistant. The work also suggests that engineers may be able to gain new insights into biological systems through the study of the structure-function relationships found in music and other art forms.

The MIT researchers — David Spivak, a postdoc in the Department of Mathematics, Associate Professor Markus Buehler of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and CEE graduate student Tristan Giesa — published their findings in the December issue of BioNanoScience.

Here’s part of how they developed the analogy between spider silk and music using mathematics (from the MIT news release),

They created the analogy using ontology logs, or “ologs,” a concept introduced about a year ago by Spivak, who specializes in a branch of mathematics called category theory. Ologs provide an abstract means for categorizing the general properties of a system — be it a material, mathematical concept or phenomenon — and showing inherent relationships between function and structure.

To build the ologs, the researchers used information from Buehler’s previous studies of the nanostructure of spider silk and other biological materials.

“There is mounting evidence that similar patterns of material features at the nanoscale, such as clusters of hydrogen bonds or hierarchical structures, govern the behavior of materials in the natural environment, yet we couldn’t mathematically show the analogy between different materials,” Buehler says. “The olog lets us compile information about how materials function in a mathematically rigorous way and identify those patterns that are universal to a very broad class of materials. Its potential for engineering the built environment — in the design of new materials, structures or infrastructure — is immense.”

“This work is very exciting because it brings forth an approach founded on category theory to bridge music (and potentially other aspects of the fine arts) to a new field of materiomics,” says Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Joyce Wong of Boston University, a biomaterials scientist and engineer, as well as a musician. “This approach is particularly appropriate for the hierarchical design of proteins, as they show in the silk example. What is particularly exciting is the opportunity to reveal new relationships between seemingly disparate fields with the aim of improving materials engineering and design.”

I always like to have a visual,

Graphic: Christine Daniloff

You can get more details from either the Nanowerk website or the MIT website.

Since it’s a Friday I thought I’d include a video of a song about spiderwebs and found this on YouTube,

Happy Friday!