Related papers: Fracture metamaterials with on-demand crack paths …

This paper studies a two-phase material with a microstructure composed of a hard brittle reinforcement phase embedded in a soft ductile matrix. It addresses the full three-dimensional nature of the microstructure and macroscopic…

Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…

The morphing of 3D structures is suitable for i) future tunable material design for customizing material properties and ii) advanced manufacturing tools for fabricating 3D structures on a 2D plane. However, there is no inverse design method…

In this work, we extend the recently proposed adaptive phase field method to model fracture in orthotropic functionally graded materials (FGMs). A recovery type error indicator combined with quadtree decomposition is employed for adaptive…

From self-assembly and protein folding to combinatorial metamaterials, a key challenge in material design is finding the right combination of interacting building blocks that yield targeted properties. Such structures are fiendishly…

Nature provides examples of self-assemble lightweight disordered network structures with remarkable mechanical properties which are desirable for many applications purposes but challenging to reproduce artificially. Previous experimental…

Controlling the thermal expansion of materials is of great technological importance. Uncontrolled thermal expansion can lead to failure or irreversible destruction of structures and devices. In ordinary crystals, thermal expansion is…

Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…

This paper is devoted to the mechanics of fractal materials. A continuum framework accounting for the topological and metric properties of fractal domains in heterogeneous media is developed. The kinematics of deformations is elucidated and…

We investigate how material rigidity acts as a key control parameter for the failure of solids under stress. In both experiments and simulations, we demonstrate that material failure can be continuously tuned by varying the underlying…

One of the main approaches for modeling fracture and crack propagation in solid materials is adaptive insertion of cohesive elements, in which line-like (2D) or surface-like (3D) elements are inserted into the finite element mesh to model…

Fracture is a fundamental mechanism of materials failure. Propagating cracks can exhibit a rich dynamical behavior controlled by a subtle interplay between microscopic failure processes in the crack tip region and macroscopic elasticity. We…

Anisotropic homogeneous metamaterials that are neither wholly dissipative nor wholly active at a specific frequency are permitted by classical electromagnetic theory. Well-established homogenization formalisms indicate that such a…

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…

In the development of active animate materials, electromechanical coupling is highly attractive to realize mechanoresponsive functionality. Piezoelectricity is the most utilized electromechanical phenomenon due to the wide availability of…

Self-assembly processes provide the means to achieve scalable and versatile metamaterials by "bottom-up" fabrication. Despite their enormous potential, especially as a platform for energy materials, self-assembled metamaterials are often…

Brittle materials exhibit sharp dynamical fractures when meeting Griffith's criterion, whereas ductile materials blunt a sharp crack by plastic responses. Upon continuous pulling ductile materials exhibit a necking instability which is…

Cutting soft materials is a complex process governed by the interplay of bulk large deformation, interfacial soft fracture, and contact forces with the cutting tool. Existing experimental characterizations and numerical models often fail to…

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…

Exploiting the framework of peridynamics, a dimensionally-reduced plate formulation is developed that allows for the through-thickness nucleation and growth of fracture surfaces, enabling the treatment of delamination in a lower-dimensional…