Construction Bionics

When swimming star Ian Thorpe swam his world record in the 200-metre freestyle at the World Cup in Berlin, many attributed it to his "full-body suit". The material of this swimming suit was based on the skin of a shark, which reduces frictional resistance in the water thanks to its surface structure of sharp teeth. So perhaps this example of bionics was actually the decisive factor in the race for hundredths of a second that benefited Ian Thorpe.

Or the Velcro fastener invented by bionic engineer George de Mestral. After a walk in the woods with his dog, he was keen to find out how all the burrs in the dog's fur could get so firmly hooked, recognized the principle of microscopic barbs and translated it into a concept that today closes bags, jackets, shoes and much more.

Bionics aims to learn from such successful solutions in nature and translate them into products and solutions. In its 4 billion years of development, nature has naturally selected the principles that work in the competition for survival. We humans can still learn a lot from this fantastic ingenuity of "nature's engineer" - from the automotive industry to mechanical engineering and the textile industry.

Design bionics course: how industry learns from nature

The part-time M.Eng. Construction Bionics at htw saar focuses on the interface between biology and technology in the field of bionics. Students learn how to analyze mechanisms and constructions from nature and translate them into engineering solutions. In the postgraduate course, we teach experienced professionals from fields such as mechanical engineering or mechatronics basic biological knowledge as well as suitable methods for searching for and recognizing phenomena in nature and translating them into a technical principle. Experts from biology, on the other hand, gain important basic knowledge of mechanics, statics, strength of materials or materials science. Experienced professionals from other fields such as architecture, biomedical engineering, automotive engineering or materials science can also broaden their horizons on the course in order to apply their new specialist knowledge to specific projects in their profession.

In the distance learning course, we bring together content and specialists from several disciplines and impart important basic knowledge before the actual project work begins and the final thesis is written.

Students thus learn the path and the tools with which they can develop innovative technical products and processes and offer their results on the market.

Core questions of the course

The Design Bionics degree program deals with the following questions:

• How can we translate functioning principles from nature into technical products or mechanisms?
• What challenges are there in business and society - and how can students find a concrete, bionic solution?
• How does the workflow from the analysis of a biological mechanism to the finished technical product work?

The engineering bionics degree program broadens students' horizons, which they can very quickly apply in practice. After successfully completing the course, they are able to find suitable mechanisms in biology for their own challenges, translate them into technical principles and bring them to market. Mechanical engineers and mechatronics engineers take inspiration from nature when developing new machines or mechanisms and translate them into technical products. Biologists can form their own bionics project teams with technicians in their company to tackle completely new projects. Architects can transfer the shell skeleton of a sea urchin to the round construction of their next designs. Logistics experts can use new insights into the most efficient routes in an anthill for their business processes. And so the list of possible applications could go on and on, because the inspirations and ideas are almost endless and await the curiosity of the newly qualified construction bionics experts at htw saar.