Natural composites, formed through biomineralization, have highly ordered structures which have been aptly explored for functional applications. Though the role of organic phases has been well understood in biomineralization, not enough attention has been paid to the role of bio-membranes which are often found encapsulating the chamber in which mineralization occurs. We have used the natural protein and semi-permeable membrane of chicken eggs to grow different materials such as ceramics, semi-metals and metals to understand the role of bio-membranes in biomineralization. We here report the successful biomimetic synthesis of calcite, cadmium sulphide, and silver having homogeneous morphologies. We have found that the membrane operates like a tuned gateway, playing a significant role in controlling the morphology of the inorganic crystals formed during biomineralization.

Ion-exchange Polymer Metal Composites (IPMC) are a new class of intelligent material that can be used effectively as actuators and artificial muscles. IPMC was fabricated and its displacement and force characteristics were investigated with respect to voltage, frequency and waveform of the controlling signal. A square waveform input generated slightly larger dis-placement and force than sinusoidal or triangular waveform. When the voltage was increased and the frequency was decreased, displacement and force were both increased. However, although the bending deformation of IPMC was large, the output force was much lower than we expected. Improvement of the force output is key and is the main obstacle to be overcome in order to make IPMC of practical use.

This paper addresses the design of a biomimetic fish robot actuated by piezoceramic actuators and the effect of artificial caudal fins on the fish robot’s performance. The limited bending displacement produced by a lightweight piezocomposite actuator was amplified and transformed into a large tail beat motion by means of a linkage system. Caudal fins that mimic
the shape of a mackerel fin were fabricated for the purpose of examining the effect of caudal fin characteristics on thrust pro-duction at an operating frequency range. The thickness distribution of a real mackerel’s fin was measured and used to design artificial caudal fins. The thrust performance of the biomimetic fish robot propelled by fins of various thicknesses was examined in terms of the Strouhal number, the Froude number, the Reynolds number, and the power consumption. For the same fin area and aspect ratio, an artificial caudal fin with a distributed thickness shows the best forward speed and the least power con-sumption.

A new piezoelectric pump can pump liquid either forward or backward and adjust the flow rate. Thus an object can be driven forward or backward at different speeds. The driver of the pump, a circular piezoelectric plate, is modelled by Finite Element Method (FEM) in ANSYS and its performance is simulated and analyzed. The pump gives the best performance when the driving signals of the inlet and outlet valves have a bigger duty cycle and the plate has a higher voltage applied.

One of many interesting research activities in biofluidmechanics is dedicated to investigations of locomotion in water. Some of propulsion mechanisms observed in the underwater world are used in the development process of underwater auto-nomic vehicles (AUV). In order to characterise several solutions according to their manoeuvrability, influence on the sur-rounding fluid and energetic efficiency, a detailed analysis of fin-like movement is indispensable.
In the current paper an analysis of undulatory, oscillatory and combined fin-like movements by means of numerical simulation is carried out. The conservation equation of mass and the conservation equation of momentum are solved with the Finite Volume Method (FVM) by use of the software CFX−10.0. The undulatory and oscillatory fin movements are modelled with an equation that is implemented within an additional subroutine and joined with the main solver. Numericalsimulations are carried out in the computational domain, in which one fin is fixed in a flow-through water duct. Simulations are carried out in the range of the Re number up to 105. The results show significant influence of applied fin motion on the velocity distribution in the surrounding fluid.

It is very important in the field of bioinformatics to apply computer to perform the function annotation for new sequenced bio-sequences. Based on GO database and BLAST program, a novel method for the function annotation of new biological sequences is presented by using the variable-precision rough set theory. The proposed method is applied to the real data in GO database to examine its effectiveness. Numerical results show that the proposed method has better precision, recall-rate and harmonic mean value compared with existing methods.