Abstract
Tensegrity structures resemble biological tissues: A structural system that holds an internal balance of prestress. Owing to the presence of prestress, biological tissues can dramatically change their properties, making tensegrity a promising platform for tunable and functional metamaterials. However, tensegrity metamaterials require harmony between form and force in an infinitely–periodic scale, which makes the design of such systems challenging. In order to explore the full potential of tensegrity metamaterials, a systematic design approach is required. In this work, we propose an automated design framework that provides access to unlimited tensegrity metamaterial designs. The framework generates tensegrity metamaterials by tessellating blocks with designated geometries that are aware of the system periodicity. In particular, our formulation allows creation of Class-1 (i.e., floating struts) tensegrity metamaterials. We show that tensegrity metamaterials offer tunable effective elastic moduli, Poisson’s ratio, and phononic bandgaps by properly changing their prestress levels, which provide a new dimension of programmability beyond geometry.
Highlights
IntroductionBiological tissues (such as muscles) are capable of actively changing their material properties [1, 2, 3]
Biological tissues are capable of actively changing their material properties [1, 2, 3]
We show that the effective elastic moduli, Poisson’s ratio, and phononic bandgaps of the tensegrity metamaterials can be effectively tuned by changing prestress level, our design parameter of interest
Summary
Biological tissues (such as muscles) are capable of actively changing their material properties [1, 2, 3]. Through the contraction of myofibrils, muscle cells generate prestress that lead to tunable stiffness and shape. This mechanism offers a route to create smart tunable materials. A more general classification of tensegrity is proposed by Skelton & de Oliveira [10] where a Class-n tensegrity structure has at most n struts connected at each node. Engineering applications of tensegrities include deployable [14, 15, 7], actively tunable [16, 17, 18], and lightweight structures [19] These advantages, if successfully transferred to the micro-scale, could lead to metamaterials with unprecedented mechanical properties and functionalities [9]
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