A cool biologically inspired design class I am in has our team looking for a way to improve our water transportation system.
Engineers estimate that the cost of repairing the nations badly damaged waterworks infrastructure will be in the ball park of 480 Billion Dollars. My own city, Atlanta, loses as a conservative estimate: 18% of its water through infrastructure. Breaks in piping infrastructure allow pathogens and metals to get into drinking water and allows raw waste to escape into ground water from sewage lines.
We are looking at how biological systems self repair and we are trying to design a primitive version of this system. In general many biological systems repair in a decentralized manner and self assemble as a result of the materials that they are made of.
We are right now primarily looking at different polymers which may have such self assembling or repairing properties. Anyone read about any research which would be relevant? Tiny nano repair bots? Self healing materials? Thanks in advance. Cheers.
Edited by lucid, 13 October 2008 - 07:34 PM.
