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The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Fundamental big-picture challenges face the enterprise of burgeoning space test, which may also have an impact on the syllabus and training of a possible future Space Test Pilot School. Test fundamentals and test conduct under stresses of…
A self-replicator is usually understood to be an object of definite form that promotes the conversion of materials in its environment into a nearly identical copy of itself. The challenge of engineering novel, micro- or nano-scale…
Designing strong and robust bio-inspired structures requires an understanding of how function arises from the architecture and geometry of materials found in nature. We draw from trabecular bone, a lightweight bone tissue that exhibits a…
Specific strength (strength/density) is a crucial factor while designing high load bearing architecture in areas of aerospace and defence. Strength of the material can be enhanced by blending with high strength component or, by compositing…
Biomaterial systems have allowed for the in vitro production of complex, emergent tissue behaviors that were not possible with conventional 2D culture systems allowing for analysis of the normal development as well as disease processes. We…
Minimising the energy consumption associated with periodic motion is a priority common to a wide range of technologies and organisms - among them, many species of flying insect, for which flapping-wing flight is a life-essential mode of…
Man-made slender structures are known to be sensitive to high levels of vibration, due to their flexibility, which often cause irreversible damage. In nature, trees repeatedly endure large amplitudes of motion, mostly caused by strong…
Bone is a stiff and though, hierarchical and continuously evolving material that optimizes its structure to respond to mechanical stimuli, which also govern growth and remodeling processes. However, a full understanding of the underlying…
All systems are expected to be designed to fulfil their functions over their requested lifetime. Nevertheless, failure of a system may occur, and this is unfortunately, true also for vacuum systems. From a mechanical point of view,…
Hierarchically designed mechanical metamaterials involve nested levels of structural organization, mimicking natural structures (such as bones, wood, and bird feathers) to create advanced functional materials. Compositional hierarchy, a…
Using an alternative mechanism to dissipation or scattering, bistable structures and mechanical metamaterials have shown promise for mitigating the detrimental effects of impact by reversibly locking energy into strained material. Herein,…
Aerial vehicles with collision resilience can operate with more confidence in environments with obstacles that are hard to detect and avoid. This paper presents the methodology used to design a collision resilient aerial vehicle with…
A gossamer structure for end-of-life disposal of spacecraft to mitigate space debris is considered in comparison with other end-of-life disposal concepts to determine when it would be preferable. A needs analysis, potential use cases, and…
Auxetic materials become thicker rather than thinner when stretched, exhibiting an unusual negative Poisson's ratio well suited for designing shape transforming metamaterials. Current auxetic designs, however, are often monostable and…
Optimization of large structures of multiple components is essential to many industries for minimizing mass, especially the design of aerospace vehicles. Optimizing a single primary load member independently of all other primary structures…
There has been increasing awareness of the difficulties in reaching and extracting people from mass casualty scenarios, such as those arising from natural disasters. While platforms have been designed to consider reaching casualties and…
The need for contact-rich tasks is rapidly growing in modern manufacturing settings. However, few traditional robotic assembly skills consider environmental constraints during task execution, and most of them use these constraints as…
Constructed facilities should be robust with respect to the loss of load-bearing elements due to abnormal events. Yet, strengthening structures to withstand such damage has a significant impact on construction costs. Strengthening costs…
Plasticity is inherent to many engineering materials such as metals. While it can degrade the load-carrying capacity of structures via material yielding, it can also protect structures through plastic energy dissipation. To fully harness…