Meeting Abstract

S7.6  Tuesday, Jan. 6  Materials for reversible adhesion: from biological systems to wall-climbing robots GORB, Stanislav N.; Zoological Institute, Department of Zoology: Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany s.gorb@mf.mpg.de

Many insects and some larger animals can easily climb vertical walls or even walk on the ceiling. These features require a method to attach the feet reversibly but strongly to a surface which can be smooth or rough, hydrophilic or hydrophobic, clean or containing contaminants. During the last decade we have studied the complex features of reversible adhesion in biological systems and investigated which concepts could act as an inspiration for the development of artificial reversible adhesive systems. These general rules will be discussed in the present lecture. Comparison of a wide variety of animal groups revealed that the size of single contacting points gets smaller and their density increases as the body mass of the animal group increases. An additional advantage of patterned surfaces is the reliability of contact on various surface profiles and the increased tolerance to defects at individual contacts. Spatula-shaped tips of the setae are responsible for the proper contact formation with the substrate due to the low bending stiffness of the plates without or with a minimum of a normal load. We demonstrate here how the functional principles found in biological attachment devices aided in the development of reversible adhesive systems for numerous industrial applications.