Woodpecker Could Hold Key To Better Shock Absorption

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - A woodpecker's head may be the secret to manufacturing better shock absorbers, an advancement with benefits to people and technology.

The blog Popsci.com reported that Sang-Hee Yoon and Sungmin Park of the University of California-Berkeley are studying how woodpeckers can survive such deceleration forces of 1,200 g with each strike of their beaks, which hammer into trees at a rate of 18 to 22 times per second.

That is more than 100 times the g-force that can result in a concussion for football players, who could be among benefactors of the research.

Popsci said researchers studied the birds' anatomy and how it protects their brains before using it to make a new type of shock-absorbing device that has glass beads embedded in a steel-encased aluminum cylinder. Their inspiration was the hard but elastic beak, spongy skull bones and how the skull and cerebrospinal fluid work together to suppress vibration.

New Scientist said they tested it by placing it inside a bullet and firing it with an airgun into an aluminum wall. The test showed it could withstand shocks of up to 60,000 g.

That could help reduce the failure rate of devices that use a more conventional hard-resin.

One such example is flight recorders, which can withstand shocks of only up to 1,000 g, the blog Sify.com stated.

Other possibilities include "bunker-busting" bombs, protecting spacecraft from collisions with space debris and improving crash protection for motor sport drivers.

"This study is a fascinating example of how nature develops highly advanced structures in combination to solve what at first seems to be an impossible challenge," Kim Blackburn, an engineer at Cranfield University in the UK, told the New Scientist.