Related papers: Aerogami: Composite Origami Structures as Active A…
An approach to control tethered wings for airborne wind energy is proposed. A fixed length of the lines is considered, and the aim of the control system is to obtain figure-eight crosswind trajectories. The proposed technique is based on…
Aeroelastic structures, from insect wings to wind turbine blades, experience transient unsteady aerodynamic loads that are coupled to their motion. Effective real-time control of flexible structures relies on accurate and efficient…
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…
Thin-walled structures capable of large, reversible deformation are key to multistable structures, origami, kirigami, and soft robotics. However, conventional fabrication techniques, including 3D printing, casting, and laser cutting, suffer…
Shape-morphing capabilities are crucial for enabling multifunctionality in both biological and artificial systems. Various strategies for shape morphing have been proposed for applications in metamaterials and robotics. However, few of…
Capillary origami is the wrapping of an usual fluid drop by a planar elastic membrane due to the interplay between capillary and elastic forces. Here, we use a drop of magnetic fluid whose shape is known to strongly depend on an applied…
Can active forces be exploited to drive the consistent collapse of an active polymer into a folded structure? In this paper we introduce and perform numerical simulations of a simple model of active colloidal folders, and show that a…
The control design of an airborne wind energy system with rigid aircraft, vertical take-off and landing, and pumping operation is described. A hierarchical control structure is implemented, in order to address all operational phases:…
We explore the surprisingly rich energy landscape of origami-like folding planar structures. We show that the configuration space of rigid-paneled degree-4 vertices, the simplest building blocks of such systems, consists of at least two…
Kirigami metamaterial sheets and tubes, owing to their capacity to undergo large elastic deformations while developing three-dimensional surface textures, have enormous potential as skins for soft robots. Here, we propose to use kirigami…
Growing demands in the semiconductor industry necessitate increasingly stringent requirements on throughput and positioning accuracy of lithographic equipment. Meeting these demands involves employing highly aggressive motion profiles,…
Miura-Ori, a celebrated origami pattern that facilitates functionality in matter, has found multiple applications in the field of mechanical metamaterials. Modifications of Miura-Ori pattern can produce curved configurations during folding,…
It is well-known that the Kresling pattern of congruent triangles can be arranged either circularly on a cylinder of revolution or in a helical way. In both cases the resulting cylindrical structures are multi-stable. We generalize these…
The Miura vertex is a versatile origami pattern found in a variety of mechanisms. Previous papers have derived and validated a closed-form solution for the kinematics of a symmetric Miura vertex, but the motion of an asymmetric vertex has…
Current architectured cellular cushion materials rely mainly on damage and/or unpredictable collapse of their unit cells to absorb and dissipate energy under impact. This prevents shape recovery and produces undesirable force fluctuations…
Robotic manipulators often face challenges in handling objects of different sizes and materials, limiting their effectiveness in practical applications. This issue is particularly pronounced when manipulating meter-scale objects or those…
The design of structures submitted to aerodynamic loads usually requires the development of specific computational models considering fluid-structure interactions. Models using structural frame elements are developed in several relevant…
Shape morphing magnetic soft materials, composed of magnetic particles in a soft polymer matrix, can transform shapes reversibly, remotely, and rapidly, finding diverse applications in actuators, soft robotics, and biomedical devices. To…
As in the car industry for quite some time, dynamic simulation of complete vehicles is being practiced more and more in the development of off-road machinery. However, specific questions arise due not only to company structure and size, but…
We employ a novel computational modeling framework to perform high-fidelity direct numerical simulations of aero-structural interactions in bat-inspired membrane wings. The wing of a bat consists of an elastic membrane supported by a highly…