Related papers: Programmable Mechanical Metamaterials
Magnetic elastomers are appealing materials from an application point of view: they combine the mechanical softness and deformability of polymeric substances with the addressability by external magnetic fields. In this way, mechanical…
Colloidal magnetic particles embedded in an elastic polymer matrix constitute a smart material called ferrogel. It responds to an applied external magnetic field by changes in elastic properties, which can be exploited for various…
Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…
Ordered mechanical systems typically have one or only a few stable rest configurations, and hence are not considered useful for encoding memory. Multistable and history-dependent responses usually emerge from quenched disorder, for example…
A micromorphic computational homogenization framework has recently been developed to deal with materials showing long-range correlated interactions, i.e. displaying patterning modes. Typical examples of such materials are elastomeric…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
Exotic behaviour of mechanical metamaterials often relies on an internal transformation of the underlying microstructure triggered by its local instabilities, rearrangements, and rotations. Depending on the presence and magnitude of such a…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
A topology optimization method is presented for the design of periodic microstructured materials with prescribed homogenized nonlinear constitutive properties over finite strain ranges. The mechanical model assumes linear elastic isotropic…
Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…
Nonlinear metamaterials with tailored mechanical properties have applications in engineering, medicine, robotics, and beyond. While modeling their macromechanical behavior is challenging in itself, finding structure parameters that lead to…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
A buckled sheet offers a reservoir of material that can be unfurled at a later time. For sufficiently thin yet stiff materials, this geometric process has a striking mechanical feature: when the slack runs out, the material locks to further…
Mechanical metamaterials utilize geometry to achieve exceptional mechanical properties, including those not typically possible for traditional materials. To achieve these properties, it is necessary to identify the proper structures and…
We consider a previously experimentally realized discrete model that describes a mechanical metamaterial consisting of a chain of pairs of rigid units connected by flexible hinges. Upon analyzing the linear band structure of the model, we…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…
We analyze nonlinear properties of microstructured materials with negative refraction, the so-called left-handed metamaterials. We consider a two-dimensional periodic structure created by arrays of wires and split-ring resonators embedded…
Metamaterials hold significant promise for enhancing the imaging capabilities of MRI machines as an additive technology, due to their unique ability to enhance local magnetic fields. However, despite their potential, the metamaterials…
Knitting turns yarn, a 1D material, into a 2D fabric that is flexible, durable [1], and can be patterned to adopt a wide range of 3D geometries [2]. Like other mechanical metamaterials [3], the elasticity of knitted fabrics is an emergent…