Intelligent rearranging: How sponges hold the clue to lighter, stronger structures – Innovation – GCR

Engineers from Harvard claim to have found a way to design stronger, lighter and perhaps even taller structures by copying the skeletons of deep-sea sponges.
They say bridges built this way would be 20% stronger than the design of the standard lattice truss bridge first patented in 1820.
The clue is in the skeleton of the Euplectella aspergillum sponge, which has a diagonally-reinforced, square lattice design with a higher strength-to-weight ratio than the square lattice structures we take for…

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