Biomimetic Research for Folding and Deploying Manners of Monopetalous Flower like Morning Glory

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In this research, the unfolding manner of morning glory and petunia flowers were studied by means of the observation of unfolding manner in buds, the picture analysis of unfolding of flower, tensile tests for petals and petal ribs, construction of the numerical and paper models of flowers and the simulation of unfolding of flower using the models. The principal results obtained are as follows :1. Morning glory and petunia flowers have compounded structure with petal and petal ribs, i.e. petal ribs support the thin petals. From tensile tests, it was found that the rigidity of petal ribs are about three times greater than that of petals.2. It was found from simulation of unfolding that the radius of morning glory flower when all petals are released and the energy required for the deployment of a morning glory flower decreases with the increase of the number of petal ribs. However, when the number of petal ribs in a morning glory flower increases, the overlapped petal thickness increases dramatically and consequently it becomes difficult to put the rolled petals in a small bud.3. The deploying radius of morning glory flower follows the logistic curve which is a basic growth curve, i.e. the slow deploying speed in the early stage, high speed in the middle and again slow in the last.4. Petunia flower deploys slowly for the first 1619 hours up to 15 % deployment and quickly for the second 3〜4 hours up to 40 % deployment. And then, it deploys with relatively high speed after the stagnation of 12〜14 hours.