Achieving selective snapping-back and enhanced hysteresis in soft mechanical metamaterials via fibre reinforcement
When a soft mechanical metamaterial, consisting of a regular array of representative volume elements (RVE), is stressed up to a large strain, the delicately tailored behavior of the RVE does not prevail in the metamaterial due to boundary effect and manufacturing imperfections. A metamaterial sheet comprising RVEs designed for snapping-back behavior exhibits random snapping-through instability when uniaxially stretched. We conceptualize that loss of representativeness of RVE can be avoided by introducing fibre reinforcement to regulate boundary conditions.