Mechanical metamaterials: from reconfigurability to nonlinear waves

Mechanical metamaterials: from reconfigurability to nonlinear waves
Prof. Katia Bertoldi, Harvard University
Date and time: Thu, Apr 27, 2017 - 11:30am
Refreshments at 11:15am
Location: LGRT 1033
Category: Condensed Matter Seminar
Abstract:
Metamaterials are rapidly emerging due to their exotic and unusual properties obtained from their structure rather than their composition. In recent decades, metamaterials that manipulate optical, acoustic, and thermal fields have demonstrated their capability to exhibit highly unusual properties, such as a negative index of refraction, leading to completely new functionalities, such as perfect lenses. Mechanical metamaterials form a more recent branch of the metamaterials tree, and deal with motion, deformations, stresses and mechanical energy. In this talk I will focus on two different types of mechanical metamaterials. First, I will introduce a robust design strategy inspired by the snapology origami technique to create highly reconfigurable 3D architected materials comprising a periodic assembly of rigid plates and elastic hinges. Then, I will focus on soft mechanical metamaterials and show that they provide an ideal environment for the propagation of nonlinear waves, since they can support a wide range of effective nonlinear behaviors that are determined by the architecture.