Material Programming for 4D-Printing: Architected Mesostructures for Bioinspired Self-Shaping

What if our buildings and products could be manufactured and operated the way biological systems grow and adapt?

Material, structure, and function are tightly intertwined in nature. The movement of plants, for instance, is often encoded through the structuring of tissue materials, allowing plants to change shape over a range of spatial-temporal scales when powered by environmental stimuli. In contrast, the human practice of design and production relies on discrete parts for sensing, actuation, or control. Individual components are sourced worldwide to be assembled into complex systems that demand significant energy for operation. This divergence from nature's strategy is changing the climate and contributing to environmental degradation.

This dissertation presents a bioinspired approach to design and fabrication as an alternative to conventional methods of making. The interplay of cellulosic materials, mesostructures, and adaptive motion is managed through the developed computational fabrication framework, resulting in hygromorphic 4D-printed systems powered by the the environment. The framework is also generalizable to diverse materials and processes, as showcased through the upscaling of the methods to an industrial robot platform to construct self-shaping hybrid materials systems. Finally, the framework's applicability is proven through the transfer of design principles from biology to self-adjusting wearables for the body and weather-responsive facades for buildings.

The presented material programming approach has wide-ranging potential across scales and disciplines, demonstrating that by harnessing biobased materials, material-efficient structures, and environmental input for energy, bioinspired 4D-printing can overcome the competing resources between nature and technology.

ICD Institute for Computational Design and Construction - Prof. Achim Menges

Scientific Development

Tiffany Cheng

Cooperation Partners

Plant Biomechanics Group, Botanischer Garten der Universität Freiburg

Institut für Makromolekulare Chemie, Freiburger Materialforschungszentrum, Universität Freiburg

Abteilung Orale Biotechnologie, Universitätsklinikum Freiburg

Research Assistants

Jorge Christie, Farnaz Fattahi, Maria Razzhivina (2018); Robert Faulkner, Seyed Mobin Moussavi, Ahmad Razavi (2019); Nicolas Kubail Kalousdian (2020); August Lehrecke (2021); Fabian Eidner, Oliver Moldow, Selin Sevim, Aaron Wagner, Esra Yaman (2023)

Funding

Baden-Württemberg Stiftung (BWS, Baden-Württemberg Foundation) – Ausschreibung Innovation durch Additive Fertigung (4DmultiMATS)

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2120/1–390831618 (Bridge-Project EXC livMatS / EXC IntCDC)

Cheng, T., Tahouni, Y., Wood, D., Stolz, B., Mulhaupt, R., Menges, A.: 2020, Multifunctional Mesostructures: Design and Material Programming for 4D-printing. In Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF '20). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (DOI: 10.1145/3424630.3425418)

Cheng, T., Thielen, M., Poppinga, S., Tahouni, Y., Wood, D., Steinberg, T., Menges, A., Speck, T.: 2021, Bio‐Inspired Motion Mechanisms: Computational Design and Material Programming of Self‐Adjusting 4D‐Printed Wearable Systems. Advanced Science, 2100411. (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202100411)

Cheng, T., Wood, D., Wang, X., Yuan, P., Menges, A.: 2020, Programming Material Intelligence: An Additive Fabrication Strategy for Self-Shaping Biohybrid Components. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence: Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems [Proceedings of the Living Machines 2020 Conference], vol. 12413, pp. 36--45. (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64313-3_5)

Cheng, T., Wood, D., Kiesewetter, L., Özdemir, E., Antorveza, K., Menges, A.: 2021, Programming material compliance and actuation: hybrid additive fabrication of biocomposite structures for large-scale self-shaping. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. (DOI: 10.1088/1748-3190/ac10af)

Cheng, T., Tahouni, Y., Sahin, E.S., Ulrich, K., Lajewski, S., Bonten, C., Wood, D., Rühe, J., Speck, T., Menges, A.: 2024, Weather-responsive adaptive shading through biobased and bioinspired hygromorphic 4D-printing. Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1. (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54808-8)