School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Nature. 2017 Jan 18;541(7637):347-352. doi: 10.1038/nature20824.
Advances in fabrication technologies are enabling the production of architected materials with unprecedented properties. Most such materials are characterized by a fixed geometry, but in the design of some materials it is possible to incorporate internal mechanisms capable of reconfiguring their spatial architecture, and in this way to enable tunable functionality. Inspired by the structural diversity and foldability of the prismatic geometries that can be constructed using the snapology origami technique, here we introduce a robust design strategy based on space-filling tessellations of polyhedra to create three-dimensional reconfigurable materials comprising a periodic assembly of rigid plates and elastic hinges. Guided by numerical analysis and physical prototypes, we systematically explore the mobility of the designed structures and identify a wide range of qualitatively different deformations and internal rearrangements. Given that the underlying principles are scale-independent, our strategy can be applied to the design of the next generation of reconfigurable structures and materials, ranging from metre-scale transformable architectures to nanometre-scale tunable photonic systems.
制造技术的进步使得具有前所未有性能的结构材料得以生产。大多数此类材料的特点是具有固定的几何形状，但在某些材料的设计中，可以采用能够重新配置其空间结构的内部机制，从而实现可调功能。受 snapology 折纸技术可构建的棱柱形几何结构的结构多样性和可折叠性的启发，我们在这里引入了一种基于多面体空间填充镶嵌的稳健设计策略，以创建由刚性板和弹性铰链周期性组装而成的三维可重构材料。通过数值分析和物理原型的指导，我们系统地探索了设计结构的可移动性，并确定了广泛的不同性质的变形和内部重新排列。由于基础原理是与尺度无关的，我们的策略可以应用于下一代可重构结构和材料的设计，从米级可变形建筑到纳米级可调光子系统。
