Programmable Materials & Structures
Projects
Bio-Inspired Fast Morphing Structures with Spatially Distributed Reinforcements
Biological multistable structures, such as the snapping leaves of the Venus flytrap, are able to achieve fast shape change and complex deformations because of their unique material architectures.
This research aims to translate this to synthetic composites through spatially distributed reinforcements. To achieve this we focus on:
- Characterizing advanced manufacturing techniques for creating structures with bio-inspired, spatially distributed reinforcement systems, including 3D printing and cast composites
- Determining structural analysis methods, using composite theory and finite element analysis, that map one initial state of a multistable structure to its multiple stable states
- Developing design optimization techniques capturing the interaction of manufacturing parameters, spatially distributed reinforcements, geometry, and multistability
The results have potential applications in aerospace morphing structures and soft/compliant robotics.
Students
Researchers
- Dr. Hortense Le Ferrand, Visiting Postdoc ETH Zurich
Publications
- K. S. Riley, H. Le Ferrand, A. F. Arrieta. Modeling of bio-inspired, snapping composite shells with magnetically aligned reinforcements. ASME Conference on Smart Structures, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS2017), Snowbird, Utah, USA, September 18 – 20, 2017.
- H. Le Ferrand, A. R. Studart, A. F. Arrieta. Bio-inspired hierarchically structured snapping multifunctional composites. Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting, November 27th-December 2nd, 2016.
- J. Schmied, H. Le Ferrand, P. Ermanni, A. R. Studart, A. F. Arrieta. Programmable snapping composites with bio-inspired architecture. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 12(2), 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/aa5efd
3D Printing of Switchable Multistable Structures
The shape memory effect (SME) has enables a broad class of applications ranging from consumer products, self-adjusting spectacles, to adaptive actuators.
Shape memory is associated with phase transition in special alloys and polymers, restricting the range of environments in which such systems can be applied.
This project aims to understand the SME mechanics of PLA to formulate a 3D printing process dependent constitutive model that can be used to produce Switchable Multistable Structure (SMS).
This new class of material systems exhibit elastic multi-stable at a certain temperature range, while being monostable otherwise.
SMS is a new material system concept enabled by 3D printing allowing to manufacture components exhibiting concurrently the SME from phase transformation as well as elastic multi-stability from pre-stress.
The generation of elastic multi-stability enables to achieve reconfiguration without requiring phase transformation, enabling applications in which thermally driven adaptation is impractical.
Students
- Karl J. Ang (BSME)
- Katie Riley (ME PhD)
Origami Inspired Self-Morphing Exploiting Pre-stress
This project explores and translates examples in biology in which pre-stress is utilized to radically expand the design space of origami structures.
We focus on utilizing advanced processing techniques to create architectured materials enabling the necessary pre-stress for programming fast, self-reconfiguration in origami inspired systems.
Providing intrinsic self-folding simplifies actuation and control as the pre-stress drives the folding/unfolding of the structure with minimal intervention.
Researchers
- Jakob Faber, Visiting Postdoc ETH Zurich
Collaborators
- Andre R. Studart, Professor, ETH Zurich
Publications
- J. Faber, A. F. Arrieta, A. R. Studart. Learning from the earwig wing: a bioinspired approach towards fast morphing structures using multistability. 21st International Conference on Composite Materials (ICCM), Xi’an, China, August 20 – 25, 2017.
