Design framework for programmable three-dimensional woven metamaterials

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Mechanical Engineering
• Computational Mechanics

Background:

• Mechanical metamaterials often prioritize stiffness over deformability.
• Woven lattices offer a pathway to compliant and stretchable metamaterials.
• Current design methods for woven lattices are manual and restrictive.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a geometric design framework for woven lattices.
• To enable tunable architectures, functional gradients, and heterogeneity in woven metamaterials.
• To explore the compliant and stretchable regime of mechanical metamaterials.

Main Methods:

• Encoding woven topology using a graph structure.
• Microscale in situ tension experiments.
• Computational mechanics modeling.

Main Results:

• Achieved highly tunable anisotropic stiffness (over an order of magnitude variation).
• Demonstrated extreme stretchability (up to a stretch of four).
• Showcased programmable failure patterns through design tunability.

Conclusions:

• The framework provides a toolbox for designing and modeling high-compliance mechanical metamaterials.
• Enables programmable large-deformation and nonlinear responses.
• Expands the accessible design and property space for woven metamaterials.