About this 3D model

## A building method for high tolerance against damage. It shows that certain fractal designs have high practical value beyond the obvious application of saving weight. And that when building a device from many identical units with a certain mechanical function (that is a mechanical metamaterial) putting them together naively in a grid configuration (a crystal) is a rather bad option. ## How the demo works The present 2D example object thats made to illustrate this uses simple springs as instructive placeholders for more complex units. An actual 3D design may have - in place of the springs - things like linear actuators ("motor-muscles" - more below) or interconnected bearing-layers that evenly distribute speed differences ("infinitesimal bearings" - more below). Stick one or multiple of the helpful sabotaging platelets into the springs to block them and see how much actuation length you loose. (The sabotaging-platelets can be tied to the loop on the main part so they dont get lost.) ## Practiacal applications Concrete application 1: http://apm.bplaced.net/w/index.php?title=Artificial_motor-muscles In a naive bulk block of linear actuator units the lost actuation length adds up almost linearly with the number of units that got stuck. When a fractal design is choosen instead the effect of accumulated damage becomes nonlinear and way smaller for damage-states that are reasonably below 50% destroyed units - in case this state is exceeded the device should probably get repaired or scrapped anyway. Concrete application 2: http://apm.bplaced.net/w/index.php?title=Infinitesimal_bearing In the case of a naive bearing-stack layer disconnection could lead to the majority of speed difference occuring on just this layer leading to excessive heatup there. Fractal design can confine the disconnection to just a small region - keeping the bearing in working order. (Sidenote: Stuck layers could be completely disconnected by some kind overload protection mechanism.) ## Further notes The reason for "units" to get damaged and stuck can be: ionizing radiation, thermal overheating, dirt and some more. General about nanomechanical metamaterials. http://apm.bplaced.net/w/index.php?title=Metamaterial http://apm.bplaced.net/w/index.php?title=Diamondoid_metamaterial Note that the slimmest connection points of the fractal structure must scale proportionally to size to avoid loss of structural integrity with the number of iterations.