Three-dimensional mechanical metamaterials with a twist

Rationally designed artificial materials enable mechanical properties that are inaccessible with ordinary materials. Pushing on an ordinary linearly elastic bar can cause it to be deformed in many ways. However, a twist, the counterpart of optical activity in the static case, is strictly zero. The unavailability of this degree of freedom hinders applications in terms of mode conversion and the realization of advanced mechanical designs using coordinate transformations. Here, we aim at realizing microstructured three-dimensional elastic chiral mechanical metamaterials that overcome this limitation. On overall millimeter-sized samples, we measure twists per axial strain exceeding 2°/%. Scaling up the number of…

• KI
  Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

  Award: award340955
• H
  Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft

  Award: award340953
• AN
  Agence Nationale de la Recherche
• L
  Labex

  Awards: award340957, ANR-11-LABX-0001-01
• HF
  Hector Fellow Academy