Beyond the bilayer: multilayered hygroscopic actuation in pine cone scales

• Kim Ulrich,
• Max David Mylo,
• Tom Masselter,
• Fabian Scheckenbach,
• Sophia Fischerbauer,
• Martin Nopens,
• Silja Flenner,
• Imke Greving,
• Linnea Hesse and
• Thomas Speck

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2025, 16, 1695–1710, doi:10.3762/bjnano.16.119

• correlation (DVC); finite element analysis; hygroscopic bending; plant biomechanics; sorption measurements; Introduction In recent years, the hygroscopic motion of plant structures has attracted increasing attention from researchers and engineers, both for fundamental biological research and bioinspired

• system further facilitates a more precise description of the bending motion. When simulating and analyzing the hygroscopic bending of pine cone scales using finite element analysis (FEA), as has already been done for a bilayer system [23][30], some geometrical simplifications and assumptions have to be

• , for each sample, the median of the axial strain components across all sample bulk voxel entries was calculated. Hygroscopic bending motion The scales of the last two pine cones were isolated, and two of the scale rows organized in steep spirals along the central axis were randomly selected for both