Fluid-Structure Interaction in Arthropod Mechanoreceptors with Application to Bio-Inspired Micro-Fluidic Sensors

节肢动物机械感受器中的流固相互作用及其在仿生微流体传感器中的应用

• 批准号: 0849433
• 负责人: Tomas Gedeon
• 金额: $ 39.99万
• 依托单位: Montana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-10-01 至 2012-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0849433&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fluid; Structure; Interaction; Arthropod; Mechanoreceptors

The ability to identify micro-flow characteristics using small sensors (1 mm or less) is becoming increasingly important in many engineering applications. In biomedical engineering there is a need to measure local flow properties in blood vessels because these fluid properties have a potential impact on the structural integrity of the vessel wall. In aerospace engineering, micro-planes are being developed for a number of applications, but the performance of these micro-planes is limited due to the difficulties of preventing flow separation along the wings and the resulting stall. Measuring these characteristics while the micro-plane is in flight is proving to be a significant challenge. While engineers have been grappling with the design of micro-flow-sensors for a few decades, crickets and other arthropods have used a few million years of evolution to develop micro-flow-sensors that are essential for threat detection, predator avoidance, and communication. In the common house cricket the micro-flow-sensors are two antenna-like appendages, called cerci, at the rear of the abdomen. Each cercus is covered with approximately 800 filiform mechanosensory hairs, each of which is connected to a single spike-generating neuron. Deflection of a hair by air currents changes the spiking activity of the associated receptor neuron at the base of the hair. It has been shown that the cercal system is extraordinarily sensitive and capable of detection of air motion caused by thermal noise. This sensitivity is beyond the capability of current artificial micro-flow sensors. Our project is based on the hypothesis that a better understanding of the arthropod micro-flow-sensor can guide the development and improvement of artificial micro-flow-sensors. We will develop new modeling and computational tools for the unsteady Stokes equations based on immersed boundary techniques to study the cercal micro-sensor in crickets. These models will be directly applicable to artificial micro-flow sensors.It has been recognized for many years that engineering design can greatly benefit from the understanding of biological structures. Evolution has resulted in very sophisticated solutions for complex problems related to the detection and analysis of very small air and fluid movements in an animal's immediate environment, and aspects of those biological solutions should be directly applicable or generalizable, in principle, for engineered systems. An interdisciplinary team that combines an engineer, mathematician and a neurobiologist will develop new modeling and computational tools to study performance characteristics of the cercal micro-flow sensor in crickets. Two principal outcomes will be directly applicable to design of artificial micro-flow sensors. The first outcome will be a collection of computational techniques and models which explicitly address the effect of fluid motion on the sensors. The second outcome will be a set of biological principles that evolved in response to constrains posed by the physics of structure-fluid interactions, and that can guide the development of artificial flow sensors.

使用小型传感器（1 毫米或更小）识别微流特性的能力在许多工程应用中变得越来越重要。 在生物医学工程中，需要测量血管中的局部流动特性，因为这些流体特性对血管壁的结构完整性具有潜在影响。在航空航天工程中，正在开发用于多种应用的微型飞机，但由于难以防止沿机翼的流动分离以及由此产生的失速，这些微型飞机的性能受到限制。事实证明，在微型飞机飞行时测量这些特性是一项重大挑战。 虽然工程师们几十年来一直致力于微流量传感器的设计，但蟋蟀和其他节肢动物已经经历了几百万年的进化来开发微流量传感器，这对于威胁检测、躲避捕食者和通信至关重要。在常见的家蟋蟀中，微流量传感器是腹部后部的两个类似天线的附属物，称为尾叶。每个尾尾覆盖着大约 800 根丝状机械感觉毛，每根毛都与一个产生尖峰的神经元相连。气流使头发偏转会改变头发根部相关受体神经元的尖峰活动。 事实证明，大脑系统非常敏感，能够检测由热噪声引起的空气运动。这种灵敏度超出了当前人造微流量传感器的能力。 我们的项目基于这样的假设：更好地了解节肢动物微流量传感器可以指导人工微流量传感器的开发和改进。 我们将基于浸入边界技术为非定常斯托克斯方程开发新的建模和计算工具，以研究蟋蟀的尾部微传感器。这些模型将直接适用于人造微流量传感器。多年来人们已经认识到工程设计可以极大地受益于对生物结构的理解。进化已经为与动物直接环境中非常小的空气和流体运动的检测和分析相关的复杂问题带来了非常复杂的解决方案，并且这些生物解决方案的各个方面原则上应该直接适用于或可推广到工程系统。 由工程师、数学家和神经生物学家组成的跨学科团队将开发新的建模和计算工具，以研究蟋蟀尾部微流量传感器的性能特征。两个主要成果将直接适用于人工微流量传感器的设计。第一个成果将是一系列计算技术和模型，明确解决流体运动对传感器的影响。第二个成果将是一套生物学原理，这些原理是为了响应结构-流体相互作用的物理学所造成的限制而演变的，并且可以指导人工流量传感器的开发。