Stiffness reprogrammable magnetorheological metamaterials inspired by spine for multibit visual mechanical...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Mechanical Engineering
• Information Technology

Background:

• Mechanical metamaterials offer unique advantages for information processing, especially in extreme environments.
• Challenges remain in achieving high-density, reprogrammable, and visually readable information processing in these materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel magnetorheological metamaterial with advanced information encoding capabilities.
• To enable high-density, reprogrammable, and visually readable information processing for mechanical systems.

Main Methods:

• A multibit programming spine structure strategy was employed.
• Magnetorheological spine beams with bistable transition-induced stiffness variation were designed.
• Integration with mechanoluminescent materials for visual readout.

Main Results:

• A stiffness reprogrammable magnetorheological metamaterial (SRMM) was created.
• The SRMM demonstrated a 40-fold stiffness conversion capability and 10-bit high-density information encoding.
• Mechanical information was successfully visualized through stiffness-to-optical signal conversion.

Conclusions:

• The developed SRMM offers expansive information encoding spaces and stable operation.
• The stiffness-based approach provides convenient readout methods for mechanical information.
• This work advances the design of mechanical information processing systems for extreme environments.