Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI
The safety of technical systems is often not planned properly: On the one hand, they are extremely robust for foreseeable malfunctions, because partly redundant protection capacities are provided for each respective potential fault. This is inefficient and consumes unnecessary resources. On the other hand, there is no protection for unforeseen incidents. This leaves the system vulnerable, since the possibility of damage must be planned in advance. In contrast, biological systems are characterized by very high efficiency, resilience and sustainability. They react dynamically and adapted to their manner to different external disturbances. Decisive for the complete system are the selection and timing of the individual reaction mechanisms, which also influence each other in a complex biological network.
As part of the BioMOTS project, a project team consisting of staff from Fraunhofer EMI and Fraunhofer ITEM has now shown, using the example of battery systems for electric vehicles, that biological protection principles can be abstracted and transferred to technical systems. For this purpose, principles of wound healing and pain reflex response were systematically characterized and transferred to a simulated battery system so that its resilience was significantly increased.