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Thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) are block copolymeric materials composed of plastomeric "hard" and elastomeric "soft" domains, by which they exhibit highly resilient yet dissipative large deformation features depending on volume fractions…
We investigate the damping enhancement in a class of biomimetic staggered composites via a combination of design, modeling, and experiment. In total, three kinds of staggered composites are designed by mimicking the structure of bone and…
3D-printed digital materials whose mechanical behavior travels between those from thermoplastic to rubbery polymers have become increasingly important. However, their mechanical functionalities have not been fully exploited due to intrinsic…
Architected materials that exploit buckling instabilities to reversibly trap energy have been shown to be effective for impact protection. The energy-absorbing capabilities of these architected materials can be enhanced further by…
We design, fabricate and test heterogeneous architected polycrystals, composed of hard plastomers and soft elastomers, which thus show outstanding mechanical resilience and energy dissipation simultaneously. Grain boundaries that separate…
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…
Long range order and symmetry in heterogeneous materials architected on crystal lattices lead to elastic and inelastic anisotropies and thus limit mechanical functionalities in particular crystallographic directions. Here, we present a…
The concept of concurrent material and structure optimization aims at alleviating the computational discovery of optimum microstructure configurations in multiphase hierarchical systems, whose macroscale behavior is governed by their…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
Elastocaloric cooling, which exploits the latent heat released and absorbed as stress-induced phase transformations are reversibly cycled in shape memory alloys, has recently emerged as a frontrunner in non-vapor-compression cooling…
The resistance to failure through tearing is a crucial mechanical property for the application of different elastomers. In this work, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) were introduced into a fluoroelastomer (FKM) matrix with the aim of…
Soft-elasticity in monodomain liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) is promising for impact-absorbing applications where strain energy is ideally absorbed at constant stress. Conventionally, compressive and impact studies on LCEs have not been…
Natural ceramic composites present complex microstructures that lead to tortuous crack paths and confer them high toughness. Current microreinforced composites do not yet reach the same level of complexity in their microstructures,…
Architected materials achieve unique mechanical properties through precisely engineered microstructures that minimize material usage. However, a key challenge of low-density materials is balancing high stiffness with stable deformability up…
Fueled by their excellent stiffness-to-weight ratio and the availability of mature manufacturing technologies, filament wound carbon fiber reinforced polymers represent ideal materials for thin-walled laminate structures. However, their…
Many new soft but tough rubbery materials have been recently discovered and new applications such as flexible prosthetics, stretchable electrodes or soft robotics continuously emerge. Yet, a credible multi-scale quantitative picture of…
Vertebrate animals benefit from a combination of rigidity for structural support and softness for adaptation. Similarly, integrating rigidity and softness can enhance the versatility of soft robotics. However, the challenges associated with…
Composite materials are used across engineering applications for their superior mechanical performance, a result of efficient load transfer between the structure and matrix phases. However, the inherently two-dimensional structure of…
We propose a novel formulation of elastic materials based on high-order interpolants, which fits accurately complex elastic behaviors, but remains conservative. The proposed high-order interpolants can be regarded as a high-dimensional…
The rise of soft materials and additive manufacturing has provided the feasibility of developing elastomer lattices for various engineering applications. Although earlier attempts have been made to manufacture and test the elastomer…