Carbon fiber reinforced concrete components (CCC) are regarded as a promising technology for the development of high performance and material-efficient buildings. Due to the material properties of carbon fibers, the amount of concrete in constructional components can be reduced. Therefore, new design strategies are needed for which inspiration can be derived from biological models.
Plants are exposed to a variety of forces and have to resist those without failure. Non-woody plants can be considered as a fiber reinforced materials consisting of lignified fibers embedded in parenchymatous tissue. In nodal elements, such as junctions between adventitious roots and shoots or the connection between petiole and lamina in peltate leaves, fibers are responsible for a reliable connection and efficient load distribution. Since the requirements for joints in CCC are quite similar, the fiber arrangement in such junctions may serve as inspiration for innovative bioinspired CCC.
In a multidisciplinary approach, we first characterized the anatomy and mechanical properties of respective plant structures and transferred the identified fiber structures into abstracted models. Additionally, material and growth models were developed and used to simulate the influence of differences in the fiber organization and load adaptations under growth and external stresses. Finally, promising structures will be scaled up to the dimension of building components and manufactured. The manufacturing process combines the robot-assisted placement of the textile reinforcement and 3D concrete printing technology.