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Nature-inspired stochastic metamaterials with disordered and multiscale architectures have shown great promise towards extraordinary functionalities, including high mechanical resilience, stress modulation and biased stiffness…
A robust $hp$-adaptive finite element framework is presented for the investigation of static cracks in materials characterized by complex, pointwise density variations. Within such heterogeneous media, the equilibrium equation governed by…
We introduce DynAMO, a reinforcement learning paradigm for Dynamic Anticipatory Mesh Optimization. Adaptive mesh refinement is an effective tool for optimizing computational cost and solution accuracy in numerical methods for partial…
Graphene extraordinary strength, stiffness and lightness have generated great expectations towards its application in flexible electronics and as mechanical reinforcement agent. However, the presence of lattice defects, unavoidable in…
The optimal stiffness for soft swimming robots depends on swimming speed, which means no single stiffness can maximise efficiency in all swimming conditions. Tunable stiffness would produce an increased range of high-efficiency swimming…
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…
Soft composite solids are made of inclusions dispersed within soft matrices. They are ubiquitous in nature and form the basis of many biological tissues. In the field of materials science, synthetic soft composites are promising candidates…
This paper proposes a modular framework to generate robust biped locomotion using a tight coupling between an analytical walking approach and deep reinforcement learning. This framework is composed of six main modules which are…
Heterostructured (HS) materials exhibit excellent mechanical properties, combining high strength and significant ductility. Hetero-deformation-induced (HDI) hardening and strain de-localization are key to their strength-ductility synergy.…
Snapping of a slender structure is utilized in a wide range of natural and man-made systems, mostly to achieve rapid movement without relying on muscle-like elements. Although several mechanisms for elastic energy storage and rapid release…
Orthogonally assembled double-layered corrugated (OADLC) mechanisms are a class of foldable structures that harness origami-inspired methods to enhance the structural stiffness of resulting devices; these mechanisms have extensive…
Mechanical metamaterials have continued to offer unprecedented tunability in mechanical properties, but most designs to date have prioritized attaining high stiffness and strength while sacrificing deformability. The emergence of woven…
Many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can remain aerodynamically flyable after sustaining structural or control surface damage, yet insufficient robustness in conventional autopilots often leads to mission failure. This paper proposes a…
In 3D printing, stiff fibers (e.g., carbon fiber) can reinforce thermoplastic polymers with limited stiffness. However, existing commercial digital manufacturing software only provides a few simple fiber layout algorithms, which solely use…
In contrast with the diversity of materials found in nature, most robots are designed with some combination of aluminum, stainless steel, and 3D-printed filament. Additionally, robotic systems are typically assumed to follow basic…
Modulating the stiffness of soft actuators is crucial for improving the efficiency of interaction with the environment. However, current stiffness modulation mechanisms are hard to achieve high lateral stiffness and a wide range of bending…
Piping inspection robots play an essential role for industries as they can reduce human effort and pose a lesser risk to their lives. Generally, the locomotion techniques of these robots can be classified into mechanical and bioinspired. By…
The impressive lifelong learning in animal brains is primarily enabled by plastic changes in synaptic connectivity. Importantly, these changes are not passive, but are actively controlled by neuromodulation, which is itself under the…
Previous mechanical meta-structures used for mechanical memory storage, computing and information processing are severely constrained by low information density and/or non-robust structural stiffness to stably protect the maintained…
We design and analyze a new adaptive stabilized finite element method. We construct a discrete approximation of the solution in a continuous trial space by minimizing the residual measured in a dual norm of a discontinuous test space that…