Shaking the wings and preening feathers with the beak help a bird to recover its ruffled feather vane

作     者：Zhao, Jing-Shan Zhang, Jiayue Zhao, Yuping Zhang, Zhaodong Godefroit, Pascal 

作者机构：Tsinghua Univ Dept Mech Engn State Key Lab Tribol Beijing 100084 Peoples R China Royal Belgian Inst Nat Sci Brussels Belgium 

出 版 物：《MATERIALS & DESIGN》 (Mater. Des.)

年 卷 期：2020年第187卷

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 080502[工学-材料学] 

基　　金：National Natural Science Foundation of China 

主　　题：Feather Hierarchical vane structure Self-healing Flapping robot 

摘      要：The feather of a bird consists of barbs which again comprise numerous barbules with micro-hooklets. This hierarchically organized feather structure provides a smooth vane to bear the load from the airflow: however, the feather vane is vulnerable to disruption by external pulling forces during collision with the branches of a tree and hitting some small obstacles in flight or strong turbulence. The feather is unable to carry the weight of the bird s body if the vane could not be recovered immediately. Here we discovered that the feather vane can be re-established easily by birds themselves. A bird can always recover its feather vane from ruffled state by shaking its wings and preening its feathers with its beak because of the cascaded geometries of barbs and barbules. This biophysical mechanism of self-healing suggests that the hierarchical vane structure can be used to design artificial feathers for a flapping robot. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.