Mechanical Design of Wood Cell Walls

Biological systems inspire the design of new engineering materials due to their light weight structures and high adaptivity. A fist fundamental step in this biomimetic process is to understand and to extract the underlying structure-function relationships. Trees are particularly well suited for such “bio-inspired” studies since they develop high quality structures which may last for thousands of years and growing to 100 m height. This article provides an insight into recent research activities on the mechanical design of wood cell walls and emphasises how effectively trees control mechanical properties by adjusting the structural organisation of the cell wall.