Biomimicry and Birds
Every autumn, around 8 billion (with a B!) birds migrate in the Northern Hemisphere to warmer areas to overwinter. For centuries, birds have been studied and used as design inspiration for a lot of the modern engineering that we have today. Nature is our foundation for everything.
In the early 1500s Leondardo DaVinci was fascinated with the idea of human flight and published the Codex on the Flight of Birds. His observations, with over 500 sketches, were the beginning concepts for what would eventually culminate into a successful airplane in the twentieth century.
So what specific inspiration have we gotten from birds?
One of the most recognizable formations is likely when geese migrate as a group. You'll typically see them flying in a v-formation as they migrate south for the winter. This formation helps produce an updraft for the birds in the back and conserve energy, allowing them to fly with less fatigue. It also lets the birds easily keep track of one another, which is why this formation is used by fighter pilots. Studies have also shown that flying in this v-formation has a fuel savings of 10% and engineers think they can get that up to 15%.
Kingfishers are all over North America near large bodies of water and streams. Many of them migrate from Canada and Alaska to southern areas of North America during the fall. Their ability to slice through the water beak-first with almost no splash caught the eye of scientists and engineers. They re-designed the front of the Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan to mirror the beaks of kingfishers. This shape reduced the loud "tunnel boom" that happened when trains exited a tunnel at high speeds.
Some northern species of woodpeckers migrate south for the winter, while others in more temperate regions stay put. That means in the fall you'll start to hear the sound of them working hard making holes in trees for their winter nests. Scientists and engineers watching woodpeckers got the idea of shock absorption helmets by watching how woodpeckers would constantly hit hard surfaces without suffering a concussion or dying. But nature, always ready to fascinate us further, has recently shown us that woodpeckers have no shock absorption at all. Instead, their beaks act similarly to a hammer, putting force into the bark and making the holes that we know so well. What keeps them from getting a concussion is the fact that their brains are so much smaller than their skull. A woodpecker would need to hit wood twice as hard as they do in order to suffer a concussion. It's a fascinating study in how our initial assumptions may not be based on reality.
Peregrine falcons have one of the longest migrations of any North American bird. "Peregrine" means wanderer and it's a well deserved name. These birds can travel up to 15,500 miles (25,000 km) in a single year. They're ability to do proportional navigation while diving (also called stooping) at speeds up to 200 miles per hour also makes them one of the fastest creatures on earth and extremely impressive hunters. The profile shape that their body makes when diving was likely the inspiration for the shape of the B2 and B-21. I spend hours researching the links in these newsletters, and I only found one research paper that supported this theory and broke it down, likely because Northrup Grumman won't allow any visibility into their process. But take a look at the two side by side and tell me what you think.
We'll end with hummingbirds. Most hummingbirds in the Northern Hemisphere migrate during fall, flying up to 4,000 miles to get to South and Central America for the winter. The way that a hummingbird's wings move are actually more similar to an insects movements than other birds, generating lift on both the upstroke and downstroke. It's this movement that lets them hover and be highly maneuverable. Knowing this, researchers have started studying the patterns and wing lengths to see how these movements might make drones more maneuverable, too.