Boolean AND/OR mechanical logic using multi-plane mechanical metamaterials

Abstract

In recent years, and with the continual development of additive manufacturing technologies, mechanical metamaterials have been explored for their programmable nature. This has opened a new design space into mechanical devices that utilise the structure of a material to perform a function, otherwise known as functional materials. Several examples of functional materials performing mechanical Boolean logic have been successfully demonstrated in the past. Previous designs were shown to have a limited number of gate configurations due to device operation occurring in a single plane. In this paper, a novel approach in performing AND and OR mechanical logic is successfully demonstrated. The proposed mechanical metamaterial controls the buckling response of a biased Von Mises Truss through actuation of anisotropic 3D unit cells to perform Boolean logic. It is shown, by changing the separation distance between unit cells, the functional material can behave as an AND/OR gate. Actuation of the unit cell changes the effective beam length of the bistable system, allowing a snap-through response to occur. By changing the orientation of the 3D unit cells, the input direction must also be considered for a snap-through response. The mechanical logic gates demonstrated are multi-plane, as the correct plane of actuation and input sequence are required for an output to occur.