Bionic Structures for Innovative Concrete Slabs

The adaption of natural structures in technical systems leads to highly efficient and sustainable constructions. Especially for concrete slabs, bionic structures can be applied into the inner and to the exterior structure, which leads to improved lightweight bearing systems with a natural flow of forces. This scientific paper presents results of a research project financed by the German Science Foundation considering the design process, the nonlinear simulations and the experiments of two developed bionic slab structures. The structures presented are (1) spider webs as base for an innovative reinforcement configuration and (2) geometries and forms of natural structures like the bottom side of water lilies or seashells for optimizing ribs and splines.

The bionic concrete structures are optimized by use of evolutionary algorithms. The developed models are tested in large scale experiments at the University of Duisburg-Essen.