architected materials

Two PhD students are being sought to fill openings in the Gross Materials Lab (group website: andrewjgross.com) at the University of South Carolina. Research activities are focused on the design, fabrication, and characterization of architected materials. Students must be capable coders to be considered. Students interested in or having prior experience with finite element modeling, mechanical property testing, and 3D printing are strongly encouraged to apply.

We recently presented an original research that uses 3d printing to realise the mimicry of the microstructure observed in crystalline metals to employ crystals’ hardening mechanisms to develop robust and damage-tolerant architected materials (Nature 2019; 565:305 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0850-3).

Abstract

Dear Mechanicians,

You are cordially invited to submit your abstract (text 400 words) to our Symposium on Recent Advances in Mechanical Metamaterials (symposium 352) as part of the 18th U.S. National Congress for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics that will be hosted by Northwestern University at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare from June 5 to June 9, 2018.

Abstract submission is open until November 10, 2017

One postdoctoral fellow position is available in the area of architected materials. Interested individuals should have a Ph.D. in related disciplines.  We are looking for a person with strong motivation, publication record, analytical and interpersonal skills and integrity with expertise in the area of mechanics of materials and structures, metamaterials, and finite element methods. A person with previous experiences in simulations and experiments on dynamic behaviors of soft materials and wave propagation in soft cellular structures is preferred.

Architected Materials

Introduction  

A. Rafsanjani and D. Pasini, Bistable Auxetic Mechanical Metamaterials Inspired by Ancient Geometric Motifs. Extreme Mechanics Letters 9, 291-296 (2016).

Most of the auxetic materials that have been characterized experimentally or studied analytically are anisotropic and this limits their possible applications, as they need to be carefully oriented during operation. Here, through a combined numerical and experimental approach, we demonstrate that 2D auxetic materials with isotropic response can be easily realized by perforating a sheet with elongated cuts arranged to form a periodic pattern with either six-fold or three-fold symmetry.

3D printing and numerical analysis are combined to design a new class of architected materials that contain bistable beam elements and exhibit controlled trapping of elastic energy. The proposed energy-absorbing structures are reusable. Moreover, the mechanism of energy absorption stems solely from the structural geometry of the printed beam elements, and is therefore both materials- and loading-rate independent.