An Integrated Structural Optimization Method for Bacterial Cellulose-Based Composite Biofilms

Abstract

Today's technologies offer exciting new horizons to reconfigure the realm of digital design and fabrication with the use of biologically active materials. Some of the recent works have been exploring the potentials of utilizing biological systems either as mathematical models for digital design or as the material itself in digital fabrication. As one of the novel processes of recent design thinking approaches, this paper presents an example for the collaboration with living organisms and a multidisciplinary process in which the overall structure is based on the analysis of biological material properties, mechanical data acquisition and the integration to digital optimization. In this regard, bacterial cellulose-based composite biofilms were grown and tested for their tensile properties, followed by a proposal to integrate mechanical data to digital optimization for catenary forms to better engage with real world applications. The findings have shown that the use of catenary geometry for such biologically active materials that are relatively novel to the structural use has proven effective for different prototypes thanks to their natural and customized material properties such as the ability to self-stand and biodegrade. © 2021, Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe. All rights reserved.