Modular design of curved beam-based recyclable architected materials

Abstract

Advances in manufacturing technologies have enabled architected materials with unprecedented properties. These materials are typically irreversibly designed and fabricated with characteristic geometries and specific mechanical properties, thus rendering them suitable for pre-specified requests. However, these materials cannot be recycled or reconstructed into different shapes and functionalities to economically adapt to various environments. Hence, we present a modular design strategy to create a category of recyclable architected materials comprising elastic initially curved beams and rigid cylindrical magnets. Based on numerical analyses and physical prototypes, we introduce an arc-serpentine curved beam (ASCB) and systematically investigate its mechanical properties. Subsequently, we develop two sets of hierarchical modules for the ASCB, thus expanding the constructable shape of architected materials from regular cuboids to complex curved surfaces. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the magnets attached to the centers of specific serpentine patterns of the modules allows the effective in-situ recycling of the designed materials, including sheet materials for non-damage storage, bulk materials for tunable stiffness, and protective package boxes for reshaping into decorative lampshades. We expect our approach to improve the flexibility of architected materials for multifunctional implementation in resource-limited scenarios.