Buckle up! A new class of materials is here

Date:
June 2, 2023
Source:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Summary:
Would you rather run into a brick wall or into a mattress? For
most people, the choice is not difficult. A brick wall is stiff
and does not absorb shocks or vibrations well; a mattress is soft
and is a good shock absorber. Sometimes, in designing materials,
both of these properties are needed. Materials should be good at
absorbing vibrations, but should be stiff enough to not collapse
under pressure. A team of researchers from the UvA Institute of
Physics has now found a way to design materials that manage to do
both these things.


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FULL STORY ========================================================================== Usually, the two characterizations of a material are mutually exclusive: something is either stiff, or it can absorb vibrations well -- but
rarely both.

However, if we could make materials that are both stiff and good
at absorbing vibrations, there would be a whole host of potential
applications, from design at the nano-scale to aerospace engineering.

Buckling does the trick A team of researchers from the University of
Amsterdam has now found a way to create materials that are stiff, but
still good at absorbing vibrations -- and equally importantly, that can
be kept very light-weight. David Dykstra, lead author of the publication, explains: "We discovered that the trick was to use materials that buckle,
like thin metal sheets. When put together in a clever way, constructions
made out of such buckled sheets become great absorbers of vibrations --
but at the same time, they preserve a lot of the stiffness of the material
they are made out of. Moreover, the sheets do not need to be very thick,
and so the material can be kept relatively light." The image shows an
example of a material that uses this buckling of metal sheets to combine
all of these desired properties.

A host of applications The researchers thoroughly investigated the
properties of these buckled materials, and found that they all showed this magical combination of stiffness and ability to dissipate vibrations. As
known materials do not have this desired combination of properties,
the new lab-made materials (or metamaterials) have a very wide range
of potential applications, and at a very wide range of scales. Possible
uses range from meter-sized (think of aerospace, automotive applications
and many other civil designs) to the microscale (applications such as microscopes or nanolithography). Dykstra: "Humans like to build things --
small things and big things -- and we almost always want these structures
to be light. If that can be done with materials that are both stiff and
good at shock-absorbing, many existing designs can be improved and many
new designs become possible. There really is no end to the possible applications!"
* RELATED_TOPICS
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========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Universiteit_van_Amsterdam. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. David M.J. Dykstra, Coen Lenting, Alexandre Masurier, Corentin
Coulais.

Buckling Metamaterials for Extreme Vibration Damping. Advanced
Materials, 2023; DOI: 10.1002/adma.202301747 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230602115110.htm

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