Biological systems exhibit many advanced sensory and healing traits that can be applied to the design of modern material systems. The foremost goal for the development of future adaptive structures is to provide materials capable of autonomously adapting in order to impede damage progression and, subsequently, heal the damaged region. In the Journal of Applied Physics (2010, 108 (9)) researchers at Arizona State University have created a material that may be able to not only sense damage in structural materials, such as cracking in a fibre-reinforced composite, but to even heal it. The aim of developing “autonomous adaptive structures” is… Login to continue

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