Simulating the Flow of Native Silk Feedstocks In Vivo

J. Sparkes [1],
[1] Natural Materials Group, Dept of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Published in 2015

The ability to artificially produce silk fibers has great commercial, industrial and scientific implications. Much has been made of their remarkable mechanical properties but few have considered how they are imparted on the initially liquid silk feedstock.1 I am exploring how silk duct geometry affects the fibers produced as by understanding the flow conditions within the model, and comparing them to experimental data, we can progress to the production of fibers with tailored mechanical properties.