Phys.org March 11, 2021
Catastrophic collapse of materials and structures is the inevitable consequence of a chain reaction of locally confined damage. A-team of researchers in the US (UC Irvine, Georgia Institute of Technology) created mechanical metamaterials that delocalize deformations to prevent failure. They used direct laser writing technique to generate elementary cells sized between 10 and 20 microns which were built up into eight-unit supercells that could be assembled with others to make a continuous structure. They showed that failure resistance is up to 25‐fold enhancement in deformability and orders of magnitude increased energy absorption capability without failure over same‐strength state‐of‐the‐art lattice architectures. The study provides important groundwork for design of superior engineering systems, from reusable impact protection systems to adaptive load‐bearing structures. Video …read more.
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
…The tensegrity lattice exhibited a 25-fold improvement in deformability and an orders-of-magnitude increase in energy absorption. Credit: Jens Bauer and Cameron Crook / UCI