A review of recent research on bionic structural characteristics and performance mechanisms of biomimetic materials

Lightweight structures with high energy absorption (EA) performance are of great significance in many crucial fields. Biomimetic structural design has demonstrated an effective strategy to improve the performance of both materials and structures by incorporating the unique structural characteristics of natural organisms. This review paper provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of some important advances in structural design to obtain novel bio-inspired structures with improved energy absorption properties. The structural designs are categorized and summarized based on the common characteristics of biomimetic structures and their bio-inspired sources, and detailedly introduced in terms of the structural configurations, manufacturing processes, analysis methods and energy absorption properties as well as the comparative analysis of performance indicators. Moreover, the application investigations of biomimetic lightweight structures across diverse engineering domains are explored. The introduction of biomimetic structural characteristics indeed significantly improved the structural energy absorption performance and crashworthiness while maintaining the similar overall weight. This phenomenon drives many researchers to devote themselves to this investigations, and continuously achieve new research results. Meanwhile, the endless variety of biological species in nature provides inexhaustible sources for biomimetic structural designs. However, most of these investigations stop at laboratory and are difficult to achieve actual applications due to their various limitations such as manufacturing processes, serviceability in specific environments, the cost of innovative materials and production, product maturity, and the feasibility and cost of mass production. In short, the biomimetic lightweight structures present great potential and broad application prospects, but there are still many challenges to the practical applications.