The Mechanism of Drag Reduction around Bodies of Revolution Using Bionic Non-Smooth Surfaces

Bionic non-smooth surfaces （BNSS） can reduce drag. Much attention has been paid to the mechanism of shear stress reduction by riblets. The mechanism of pressure force reduction by bionic non-smooth surfaces on bodies of revolution has not been well investigated. In this work CFD simulation has revealed the mechanism of drag reduction by BNSS, which may work in three ways. First, BNSS on bodies of revolution may lower the surface velocity of the medium, which prevents the sudden speed up of air on the cross section. So the bottom pressure of the model would not be disturbed sharply, resulting in less energy loss and drag reduction. Second, the magnitude of vorticity induced by the bionic model becomes smaller because, due to the sculpturing, the growth of tiny air bubbles is avoided. Thus the large moment of inertia induced by large air bubble is reduced. The reduction of the vorticity could reduce the dissipation of the eddy. So the pressure force could also be reduced. Third, the thickness of the momentum layer on the model becomes less which, according to the relationship between the drag coefficient and the momentum thickness, reduces drag.

Experiment about Drag Reduction of Bionic Non-smooth Surface in Low Speed Wind Tunnel

The body surface of some organisms has non-smooth structure, which is related to drag reduction in moving fluid. To imitate these structures, models with a non-smooth surface were made. In order to find a relationship between drag reduction and the non-smooth surface, an orthogonal design test was employed in a low speed wind tunnel. Six factors likely to influence drag reduction were considered, and each factor tested at three levels. The six factors were the configuration, diameter/bottom width, height/depth, distribution, the arrangement of the rough structures on the experimental model and the wind speed. It was shown that the non-smooth surface causes drag reduction and the distribution of non-smooth structures on the model, and wind speed, are the predominant factors affecting drag reduction. Using analysis of variance, the optimal combination and levels were obtained, which were a wind speed of 44 m/s, distribution of the non-smooth structure on the tail of the experimental model, the configuration of riblets, diameter/bottom width of i mm, height/depth of 0.5 mm, arranged in a rhombic formation. At the optimal combination mentioned above, the 99% confidence interval for drag reduction was 11.13% to 22.30%.

The Microstructures of Butterfly Wing Scales in Northeast of China

There are billions of tiny scales on the butterfly wings, which array regularly as the tiles on the roof. Such tilts can form various colors of the wing and afford the species many abilities to survive and propagate. Morphological experiments on the wing scales of six butterfly species living in northeast of China were conducted. By the optics microscope; the form, geometry dimension and array of the scales were observed generally. By using scanning electron microscope （SEM）, the 2D scanning and measurement were carried out and the surface micro configurations of scales were observed. The dimension and microstructure characteristics of the cross section of single scale were achieved through transmission electron microscope （TEM）. Finally, by using 3D software, three 3D models were described and the 3D visual effect was achieved. This work can put forward a basic method for the future study on the morphology of biological microstructure.

Quantitative Analysis of Berberine in Processed Coptis by Near-Infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy

The near-infrared（NIR） diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was used to study the content of Berberine in the processed Coptis. The allocated proportions of Coptis to ginger, yellow liquor or Evodia rutaecarpa changed according to the results of orthogonal design as well as the temperature. For as withdrawing the full and effective information from the spectral data as possible, the spectral data was preprocessed through first derivative and multiplicative scatter correetion（MSC） according to the optimization results of different preprocessing methods. Firstly, the model was established by partial least squares（PLS）; the coefficient of determination（R2） of the prediction was 0.839, the root mean squared error of prediction（RMSEP） was 0.1422, and the mean relative error（RME） was 0.0276. Secondly, for reducing the dimension and removing noise, the spectral variables were highly effectively compressed via the wavelet transformation（WT） technology and the Haar wavelet was selected to decompose the spectral signals. After the wavelet coefficients from WT were input into the artificial neural network（ANN） instead of the spectra signal, the quantitative analysis model of Berberine in processed Coptis was established. The R^2 of the model was 0.9153, the RMSEP was 0.0444, and the RME was 0.0091. The values of appraisal index, namely R^2, RMSECV, and RME, indicate that the generalization ability and prediction precision of ANN are superior to those of PLS. The overall results show that NIR spectroscopy combined with ANN can be efficiently utilized for the rapid and accurate analysis of routine chemical compositions in Coptis. Accordingly, the result can provide technical support for the further analysis of Berberine and other components in processed Coptis. Simultaneously, the research can also offer the foundation of quantitative analysis of other NIR application.

A Phase-Dependent Hypothesis for Locomotor Functions of Human Foot Complex

The human foot is a very complex structure comprising numerous bones, muscles, ligaments and synovial joints. As the only component in contact with the ground, the foot complex delivers a variety of biomechanical functions during human locomotion, e.g. body support and propulsion, stability maintenance and impact absorption. These need the human foot to be rigid and damped to transmit ground reaction forces to the upper body and maintain body stability, and also to be compliant and resilient to moderate risky impacts and save energy. How does the human foot achieve these apparent conflicting functions？ In this study, we propose a phase-dependent hypothesis for the overall locomotor functions of the human foot complex based on in-vivo measurements of human natural gait and simulation results of a mathematical foot model. We propse that foot functions are highly dependent on gait phase, which is a major characteristics of human locomotion. In early stance just after heel strike, the foot mainly works as a shock absorber by moderating high impacts using the viscouselastic heel pad in both vertical and horizontal directions. In mid-stance phase （-80% of stance phase）, the foot complex can be considered as a springy rocker, reserving external mechanical work using the foot arch whilst moving ground contact point forward along a curved path to maintain body stability. In late stance after heel off, the foot complex mainly serves as a force modulator like a gear box, modulating effective mechanical advantages of ankle plantiflexor muscles using metatarsal-phalangeal joints. A sound under- standing of how diverse functions are implemented in a simple foot segment during human locomotion might be useful to gain insight into the overall foot locomotor functions and hence to facilitate clinical diagnosis, rehabilitation product design and humanoid robot development.

Segmental Kinematic Coupling of the Human Spinal Column during Locomotion

As one of the most important daily motor activities, human locomotion has been investigated intensively in recent decades. The locomotor functions and mechanics of human lower limbs have become relatively well understood. However, so far our understanding of the motions and functional contributions of the human spine during locomotion is still very poor and simultaneous in-vivo limb and spinal column motion data are scarce. The objective of this study is to investigate the delicate in-vivo kinematic coupling between different functional regions of the human spinal column during locomotion as a stepping stone to explore the locomotor function of the human spine complex. A novel infrared reflective marker cluster system was constrncted using stereophotogrammetry techniques to record the 3D in-vivo geometric shape of the spinal column and the segmental position and orientation of each functional spinal region simultaneously. Gait measurements of normal walking were conducted. The preliminary results show that the spinal column shape changes periodically in the frontal plane during locomotion. The segmental motions of different spinal functional regions appear to be strongly coupled, indicating some synergistic strategy may be employed by the human spinal column to facilitate locomotion. In contrast to traditional medical imaging-based methods, the proposed technique can be used to investigate the dynamic characteristics of the spinal column, hence providing more insight into the functional biomechanics of the human spine.

Fabrication of Large-scale Nanostructure by Langmuir-Blodgett Technique

Monolayer of polymer latex spheres was prepared at the air/water interface and deposited onto glass slides through Langmuir-Blodgett （LB） technique. Large-scale, high quality hexagonally close-packed domains were found in scanning electron microscopic pictures. Details of the monolayer-forming ability were discussed. Suitable surface characteristics of the colloidal particles, especially the hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties, are the keys for the formation of ordered monolayer films. The film can be transferred onto various kinds of substrates, even high curvature surface articles, such as fibers, decorations etc, can also be used as substrates. The advantages of this fabrication method of polymer latex spheres monolayer are fast, flexible, simple and very neat.

Design method for a bionic wrist based on tensegrity structures

The traditional bionic upper limb structure design is limited by the motion pair and cannot guarantee the flexibility of the mechanical structure.The tensegrity structure has the characteristics of high deformability,strong self-adaptability,and resistance to multi-directional impact.According to the biological characteristics of the upper limbs of the human body,an anatomical study is performed on the upper limb wrist joints that achieve adduction/abduction,flexion/extension,to obtain the relationship between the movements of the related bones and muscles,and to simplify the shape and structure of the wrist.Equivalent mapping of a mechanical model based on two-bar tensile properties.Through the contraction and stretching of the spring,the movement characteristics of the human muscles are realised,and the optimised bionic upper limb wrist tensioning robot without motion pair is further obtained.Adams simulation is used to verify that the bionic tensile wrist can simulate the change movement of the human wrist.The experimental platform was built and a physical prototype was made and the prototype was tested.The results show that the bionic tensile wrist can realise the adaptive motion characteristics of the human wrist well and stably,which proves the validity and feasibility of this design method.

Experimental investigation on color variation mechanisms of structural light in Papilio maackii ménétriès butterfly wings

The body color in animals results from billions of years of their natural evolution in order to evade natural enemies, catch quarries or display themselves beauty, in-vestigation on mechanisms of structural light is an important aspect of bionics. Based on the phenomenon of Papilio maackii ménétriès’ blue scales changing into green ones immediately after dropping some alcohol aqua on the underwing sur-face and soon returning back to the original color, the relationship between micro-structure, optics characteristic of scales and changing color effect were studied using the Olympus Stereomicroscope, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Ultraviolet (UV)-Visible Spectropho-tometer. The color variation mechanisms of blue scales of Papilio maackii mé-nétriès in Chinese Northeast were revealed in this paper. When visible lights trav-eled through the concaver structure with multilayer reflector and the filled medium with different refractive indices, the reflected lights in definite wavelengths pro-duced interference and color at that wavelength came into being. It has important academic reference value to biomimetics design of video stealth materials.

Biomimetic coupling effect of non-smooth mechanical property and microstructural features on thermal fatigue behavior of medium carbon steel

Some kinds of particular functions possessed by natural organisms are often formed by coupling up the multiple typical features on their body surfaces. Inspired by the coupling phenomenon in biological system, the medium carbon steel specimens with the coupling effect of non-smooth mechanical property and microstructural features were fabricated by laser processing. Thermal fatigue behavior of specimens with biomimetic coupling surface was investigated and compared. The results confirmed that such a biomimetic method has the beneficial effect on improving the thermal fatigue property of medium carbon steel specimens. The related mechanisms behind the biomimetic coupling effect for explaining the enhanced thermal fatigue resistance were discussed preliminarily.

Microstructure and structural color in wing scales of butterfly Thaumantis diores

The butterfly Thaumantis diores is a species in the Northeast of China. There are two kinds of scales on its wings, which overlap like roof tiles and completely cover the membrane. The SEM results showed that only Type-I scales play a key role in forming the blue structural color. Type-II scales have black chemical color. The cross section micro-configuration of scales is achieved by using the transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The brilliant blue generated through the multilayer microstructure is explained by the photonic crystal reason. The multilayer microstructure of the ridges is optimized to 1D Bragg stack for simulation. The reflectivity of the wing is measured by a spectrometer, and the experimental graph accord with the simulation curves basically. When this species fly, the wing's color and brightness can change because of the transform between structural color and chemical color. The bionic color-changing design and the significance of this effect in video stealth or other fields are discussed at the end of the paper.