Hypostomus plecostomus-inspired soft sucker to adsorb slippery tissues: a stabilizing post-valvular cavity and stiffness gradient materials provide excellent adsorption performance

Abstract The hard suckers commonly used in surgical operations often cause adsorption extrusion damage to the biological tissue. To tackle this problem, from the perspective of bionics, through in-depth observation and research on the special sucker adsorption process and adsorption mechanism of hypostomus plecostomus (HP), this paper proposes a bionic soft hypostomus plecostomus sucker (BSHPS) with a variable stiffness gradient structure with a good adsorption performance on soft moist irregular biological tissues. The BSHPS comprises a lip disc, a pre-valvular cavity, and a post-valvular cavity. Through the volume changes of the pre- and post-valvular cavities, a pressure difference is generated between the inside and outside of the sucker, enabling the lip disc to remain sealed. The experiments were carried out by an automatic tensile force measurement system equipped with a vacuum pump, and the results showed that in slippery environment, the adsorption performance of the BSHPS is improved by a maximum of 61.9% compared to that in dry environment. On a biological tissue surface, the adsorption force is as high as 13.7765 N. The most important advantage of the proposed BSHPS is that it can be firmly adsorbed the surface of soft moist irregular biological tissues, effectively slowing down or avoiding adsorption extrusion damage to the biological tissue. Therefore, the BSHPS is expected to have good application prospects in modern surgical medicine.