An open honeycomb at each stage during the manufacturing process
Engineers from the University of Bristol have developed a new shape-changing metamaterial using Kirigami, which is the ancient Japanese art of cutting and folding paper to obtain 3D shapes. Metamaterials are a class of material engineered to produce properties that don't occur naturally. Currently metamaterials are used to make artificial electromagnetic and vibration absorbers and high-performance sensors. Kirigami can be applied to transform two-dimensional sheet materials into complex three-dimensional shapes with a broader choice of geometries than 'classical' origami. The research, developed within a PhD programme run by the University's EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Composites for Innovation and Science (ACCIS CDT), is published today in Scientific Reports. The type of mechanical metamaterials using the Kirigami technique, developed by PhD student Robin Neville, changes shape seamlessly, exhibits large variations in mechanical performance with small geometry changes, and can be adapted to modify its configuration by using mainstream actuation mechanisms. The Kirigami metamaterial can also be produced using off-the-shelf thermoplastic or thermoset composite materials, and different sensing and electronics systems can be embedded to obtain a fully integrated smart shape-changing structure.
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