Abstract

In the animal kingdom, adhesion and friction plays a fundamental role to secure locomotion on a variety of natural surfaces and is therefore of great importance in e.g. ceiling walk, prey capturing, and defence against predators. Previous comparative experimental studies on biological systems showed that their attachment organs are a non-trivial combination of structural (geometrical) features and material properties, which allow some animals, such as insects, spiders, geckos to adhere to and to walk on vertical walls and ceiling. During the past two decades, numerous studies have been done in order to understand the physical principles underlying the performance of those attachment systems, which are, of course, also very interesting from the biomimetics point of view. In the present seminar the functional principles of biological adhesive systems are discussed as well as the recent progress with artificial bio-inspired surfaces.