an open-access paper<\/a> published Jan. 26 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from Portela\u2019s lab provide a universal design framework that generates complex 3D woven\u00a0metamaterials with a wide range of properties. The work also provides open-source code that allows users to create designs to fit specifications and generate a file for printing or simulating the\u00a0material using a 3D printer.<\/p>\n\u201cNormal knitting or weaving have been constrained by the hardware for hundreds of years \u2014 there\u2019s only a few patterns that you can make clothes out of, for example \u2014 but that changes if hardware is no longer a limitation,\u201d Portela says. \u201cWith this framework, you can come up with interesting patterns that completely change the way the textile is going to behave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Possible applications include wearable sensors that move with human skin, fabrics for aerospace or defense needs, flexible electronic devices, and a variety of other printable textiles.<\/p>\n
The team developed general design rules \u2014 in the form of an algorithm \u2014 that first provide a graph representation of the metamaterial. The attributes of this graph eventually dictate how each fiber is placed and connected within the metamaterial. The fundamental building blocks are woven unit cells that can be functionally graded via control of various design parameters, such as the radius and pitch of the fibers that make up the woven struts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause this framework allows these metamaterials to be tailored to be softer in one place and stiffer in another, or to change shape as they stretch, they can exhibit an exceptional range of behaviors that would be hard to design using conventional soft materials,\u201d says Molly Carton, lead author of the study. Carton, a former postdoc in Portela\u2019s lab, is now an assistant research professor\u00a0in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n
Further, the simulation framework also allows users to predict the deformation response of these\u00a0materials, capturing complex phenomena such as self-contact within fibers and entanglement, and design to predict and resist deformation or tearing patterns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most exciting part was being able to tailor failure in these materials and design arbitrary combinations,\u201d says Portela. \u201cBased on the simulations, we were able to fabricate these spatially varying geometries and experiment on them at the microscale.\u201d<\/p>\n
This work is the first to provide a tool for users to design, print, and simulate an emerging class of\u00a0metamaterials that are extensible and tough. It also demonstrates that through tuning of geometric parameters, users can control and predict how these\u00a0materials will deform\u00a0and fail, and presents several new design building blocks that substantially expand the property space of woven\u00a0metamaterials.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil now, these complex 3D lattices have been designed manually, painstakingly, which limits the number of designs that anyone has tested,\u201d says Carton. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to describe how these woven lattices work and use that to create a design tool for arbitrary woven lattices. With that design freedom, we\u2019re able to design the way that a lattice changes shape as it stretches, how the fibers entangle and knot with each other, as well as how it tears when stretched to the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carton says she believes the framework will be useful across many disciplines. \u201cIn releasing this framework as a software tool, our hope is that other researchers will explore what\u2019s possible using woven lattices and find new ways to use this design flexibility,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to seeing what doors our work can open.\u201d<\/p>\n
The paper, \u201cDesign framework for programmable three-dimensional woven\u00a0metamaterials<\/a>,\u201d is available now in the journal Nature Communications. Its other MIT-affiliated authors are James Utama Surjadi, Bastien F. G. Aymon, and Ling Xu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Metamaterials \u2014 materials whose properties are primarily dictated by their internal\u00a0microstructure, and not their chemical makeup \u2014 have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[154805,154807,18,19,17,9659,124464,154808,133,12888,154804,154806],"class_list":["post-320219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-3-d-woven-metamaterials","tag-carlos-portela","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-metamaterials","tag-mit-meche","tag-molly-carton","tag-science","tag-textiles","tag-tunable-metamaterials","tag-woven-lattices"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116013737157297914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}