Shape morphing Kirigami mechanical metamaterials

Robin Neville*, Fabrizio Scarpa, Alberto Pirrera

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

144 Citations (Scopus)
710 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Mechanical metamaterials exhibit unusual properties through the shape and movement of their engineered subunits. This work presents a new investigation of the Poisson’s ratios of a family of cellular metamaterials based on Kirigami design principles. Kirigami is the art of cutting and folding paper to obtain 3D shapes. This technique allows us to create cellular structures with engineered cuts and folds that produce large shape and volume changes, and with extremely directional, tuneable mechanical properties. We demonstrate how to produce these structures from flat sheets of composite materials. By a combination of analytical models and numerical simulations we show how these Kirigami cellular metamaterials can change their deformation characteristics. We also demonstrate the potential of using these classes of mechanical metamaterials for shape change applications like morphing structures.
Original languageEnglish
Article number31067
Number of pages12
JournalScientific Reports
Volume6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Aug 2016

Research Groups and Themes

  • Bristol Composites Institute ACCIS
  • Bristol BioDesign Institute

Keywords

  • synthetic biology

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