Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering


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:

The results have potential applications in aerospace morphing structures and soft/compliant robotics.

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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


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.

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