Harley co-authors new book on cellular materials

Co-authored by Brendan Harley, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois, the new book, Cellular Materials in Nature and Medicine (Cambridge University Press), brings to life the fascinating structures and unique mechanics of natural and biomedical cellular materials. 

"This book, is intended as an expert guide to the subject for graduates and researchers," Harley explained. "The authors represent three generations of academics in this field. Mike Ashby was Lorna Gibson's PhD advisor at Cambridge (UK); Lorna  was my doctoral mentor at MIT. Lorna and Mike had previously published a book, Cellular Solids (1st and 2nd edition; also CUP) that is the definitive resource for considering the propoerties and behavior of cellular (porous) materials.

"As a graduate student I started applying cellular solids methods as a framework for describing porous biomaterials at the same time Lorna was using it to consider many biological materials--wood, bone, shells, etc. She was approached about a third edition of Cellular Solids and the three of us decided to develop an entirely new book. to describe the application of cellular solids methods for considering the properties and behavior of a wide range of natural materials and biomaterials.

"My own research still is heavily involved in developing porous biomaterials for tissue engineering applications, so the tools in this book are innately linked to my research. The second edition of Cellular Solids is still where a lot of the quantitative work is found. Our intention here was to develop a resource suitable to discussing its application in new areas--natural materials and biomaterials."

Arranged in three parts, Cellular Materials in Nature and Medicine begins with a review of the mechanical properties of nature’s building blocks--structural proteins, polysaccharides, and minerals--and the mechanics of cellular materials. Part II describes a wide range of cellular materials in nature: honeycomb-like materials such as wood and cork and foam-like materials including trabecular bone, plant parenchyma, adipose tissue, coral, and sponge.

Natural cellular materials often combine with fully dense ones to give mechanically efficient structures. The efficiency of natural sandwich structures (iris leaves, bird skulls), circular sections with radial density gradients (palm, bamboo) and cylindrical shells with compliant cores (animal quills and plant stems) are all discussed. Images convey the structural similarities of very different materials, whilst color property charts provide the reader with mechanical data.

The third section of the book discusses biomedical applications of cellular materials: metal foams for orthopedic applications and porous tissue engineering scaffolds for regenerating tissue. It includes the effect of scaffold properties on cell behavior (e.g. attachment, morphology, migration, contraction).

Harley is also a core faculty member of the Institute for Genomic Biology (Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering theme). His research interests focus on fabricating homogenous and spatially patterned cellular biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. Mike Ashby is an emeritus professor in Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where he has been a faculty member since 1973. Lorna J. Gibson is the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she has been a faculty member since 1984.
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Contact: Brendan A. Harley, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering & Institute for Genomic Biology, 217/244-7112.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, writer/editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.