A. Rafsanjani and D. Pasini, Bistable Auxetic Mechanical Metamaterials Inspired by Ancient Geometric Motifs. Extreme Mechanics Letters 9, 291-296 (2016).
ABSTRACT Auxetic materials become thicker rather than thinner when stretched, exhibiting an unusual negative Poisson’s ratio well suited for designing shape transforming metamaterials. Current auxetic designs, however, are often monostable and cannot maintain the transformed shape upon load removal. Here, inspired by ancient geometric motifs arranged in square and triangular grids, we introduce a class of switchable architected materials exhibiting simultaneous auxeticity and structural bistability. The material concept is experimentally realized by perforating various cut motifs into a sheet of rubber, thus creating a network of rotating units connected with compliant hinges. The metamaterial performance is assessed through mechanical testing and accurately predicted by a coherent set of finite element simulations. A discussion on a rich set of mechanical phenomena follows to shed light on the main design principles governing bistable auxetics.
The Poisson's ratio characterizes the resultant strain in the lateral direction for a material under longitudinal deformation. Though negative Poisson's ratios (NPR) are theoretically possible within continuum elasticity, they are most frequently observed in engineered materials and structures, as they are not intrinsic to many materials. In this work, we report NPR in single-layer graphene ribbons, which results from the compressive edge stress induced warping of the edges. The effect is robust, as the NPR is observed for graphene ribbons with widths smaller than about 10 nm, and for tensile strains smaller than about 0.5%, with NPR values reaching as large as -1.51. The NPR is explained analytically using an inclined plate model, which is able to predict the Poisson's ratio for graphene sheets of arbitrary size. The inclined plate model demonstrates that the NPR is governed by the interplay between the width (a bulk property), and the warping amplitude of the edge (an edge property), which eventually yields a phase diagram determining the sign of the Poisson's ratio as a function of the graphene geometry.
Most of the auxetic materials that have been characterized experimentally or studied analytically are anisotropic and this limits their possible applications, as they need to be carefully oriented during operation. Here, through a combined numerical and experimental approach, we demonstrate that 2D auxetic materials with isotropic response can be easily realized by perforating a sheet with elongated cuts arranged to form a periodic pattern with either six-fold or three-fold symmetry. Moreover, we also show that the auxetic behavior can be easily tuned by varying the length of the cuts and that it is retained even under large levels of applied deformation beyond the limit of small strains. This novel, simple and scalable design can serve as an important guideline for designing and fabricating isotropic auxetic materials that can have a significant impact on a wide range of applications.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352431615000759
Extreme Mechanics Letters, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.eml.2015.05.002