June 28, 2018
A collaboration between the groups of Sid Nagel, Juan de Pablo and Heinrich Jaeger explored opportunities for designing strain transmission in disordered, network-based meta-materials. These are based on the discovery, together with Andrea Liu (UPennMRSEC), that in such networks bulk and shear moduli can be tailored independently by selectively removing bonds (“pruning”).
A novel pruning strategy was developed that can transform given amorphous networks with positive Poisson ratio V into deeply auxetic networks with V ≈ -1. These concepts and strategies are applicable to 2D as well as 3D, and provide a new approach for creating materials that deform in a highly controlled, targeted manner.
