Biological systems have evolved over millions of years to make structures strong and resilient. A unique biomechanism, called sacrificial bonds and hidden length, is a self-healing, toughening, and energy dissipating system found in many bio-materials, including bone. This system is important for human health as it dissipates energy to help prevent fractures and to improve bone quality; however, there are no traditional clinical methods to measure bone quality in vivo. Current routine clinical diagnostics only focus on assessing bone quantity, thus creating a clinical need for an instrument to determine bone quality. Therefore, the first section of this thesis focuses on the development of a novel instrument that creates a mechanical measurement directly related to fracture risk, in order to measure bone quality clinically. The second section of this thesis focuses on developing a novel, bio-inspired damper, based on energy dissipating biomechanism found in bone. The bio-inspired passive damper outperforms passive dampers and has comparable performance to semi-active and active dampers for certain applications including structural control systems. A full-scale prototype is designed, fabricated, and experimentally tested that is capable of being implemented into full-scale structures. The instruments developed as a result of this research has the potential to have a profound impact on human welfare by more effectively monitoring bone quality and by creating safer structures through improved bio-inspired dampers.