Coupling self-assembling materials with digital designs to grow adaptive structures

There is a discrepancy between digital design simulations and the physical structures they produce. While current fabrication technologies and materials used to create artefacts lack the flexible and adaptive qualities present within the digital models, this is not the case in biological structures. The latter continually adapt their shape and material compositions to suit imposed environmental demands, maximise available resources and have the ability to self-heal, a process particularly evident in bone remodeling [ 1 ]. In order to instill these qualities into manufactured structures we propose a fabrication system that incorporates self-assembling / self-organising materials and design simulations. The resulting objects would have the ability to tune and adapt their material properties (location, type, composition, volume, rate, shape) and offer radically new opportunities for design and manufacturing. Firstly the paper highlights major benefits of fabricating adaptive structures from self-assembling/self-organising materials. Then it describes ongoing research that uses self-assembling materials (crystal growth) to fabricate adaptable structures by inducing turbulence electrically.