Stiffer, Stronger and Centrosymmetrical Class of Pentamodal Mechanical Metamaterials

Pentamode metamaterials have been used as a crucial element to achieve elastical unfeelability cloaking devices. They are seen as potentially fragile and not simple for integration in anisotropic structures due to a non-centrosymmetric crystalline structure. Here, we introduce a new class of pentamode metamaterial with centrosymmetry, which shows better performances regarding stiffness, toughness, stability and size dependence. The phonon band structure is calculated based on the finite element method, and the pentamodal properties are evaluated by analyzing the single band gap and the ratio of bulk and shear modulus. The Poisson's ratio becomes isotropic and close to 0.5 in the limit of small double-cone connections. Stability and scalability analysis results show that the critical load factor of this structure is obviously higher than the classical pentamode structure under the same static elastic properties, and the Young's modulus gradually converges to a stable value (the infinite case) with an increasing number of unit cells.