Research on Self-supporting Structure in Bird Nests

Abstract

The mystery behind the bird nest’s construction is not well understood. Our study focuses on the stability of a self-supporting nest-like structure. Firstly, we derived a stable/unstable phase boundary for the structure at the fixed coefficient of friction with varying geometrical parameters through force analysis. Structures with a lower height and greater friction coeffi- cient between rods are more stable. The theoretical phase boundary matched the experiment results well. Then we investigate the nest structure’s stability under applied weight. Static structures with lower height and more rods (five>four>three) are more stable. Our theory also predicts a transition from plastic phase to elastic phase. These theoretical predictions are all confirmed by experiment. In the experiment, we also find that wet rod structures are more stable than dry ones. The structures can support up to 100 times of it’s weight.