Textile hinges enable extreme properties of mechanical metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper introduces textile hinges as a scalable fabrication method for mechanical metamaterials, enabling large deformations and extreme shape-morphing behaviors akin to mechanisms, thus advancing the design of flexible, high-performance metamaterials.

Contribution

It presents a novel textile hinge fabrication approach that allows for scalable, mechanism-like behavior in mechanical metamaterials, previously difficult to achieve.

Findings

Textile hinges enable large deformations in metamaterials.

Kinematic optimization demonstrates extreme shape-morphing capabilities.

Fabrication method is scalable and practical for complex structures.

Abstract

Mechanical metamaterials -- structures with unusual properties that emerge from their internal architecture -- that are designed to undergo large deformations typically exploit large internal rotations, and therefore, necessitate the incorporation of flexible hinges. In the mechanism limit, these metamaterials consist of rigid bodies connected by ideal hinges that deform at zero energy cost. However, fabrication of structures in this limit has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate that the fabrication and integration of textile hinges provides a scalable platform for creating large structured metamaterials with mechanism-like behaviors. Further, leveraging recently introduced kinematic optimization tools, we demonstrate that textile hinges enable extreme shape-morphing responses, paving the way for the development of the next generation of mechanism-based metamaterials.