Bionic Leaf Simulating the Thermal Effect of Natural Leaf Transpiration

We proposed a kind of bionic leaf to simulate the thermal effect of leaf transpiration. The bionic leaf was firstly designed to be composed of a green coating, a water holding layer, a Composite Adsorbent (CS) layer and an adsorption-desorption rate controlling layer. A thermophysical model was established for the bionic leaf, and the dynamic simulation results reveal that the water holding layer is not necessary; a CS of high thermal conductivity should be selected as the CS layer; the adsorption-desorption rate controlling layer could be removed due to the low adsorption-desorption rate of the CS; and when CaCl2 mass fraction of the CS reaches 40%; the bionic leaf could simulate the dynamic thermal behavior of the natural leaf. Based on the simulation results, we prepared bionic leaves with different CaCl2 content. The thermographies of the bionic leaf and the natural leaf were shot using the Infrared Thermal Imager. The measured average radiative temperature difference between the bionic and natural leaves is less than 1.0 °C.