Description:

Highly deformable structures characterized by a nonlinear response have enabled the design of new classes of tunable and responsive systems and devices, including soft robots, self-regulating microfluidics, reusable energy absorbing systems, and materials with programmable response. Furthermore, such flexible mechanical metamaterials present opportunities to control the propagation of nonlinear elastic waves, since a wide range of effective nonlinear behaviors can be achieved by tuning the architecture.
In this talk I will focus on our recent studies on the propagation of large amplitude nonlinear waves in mechanical metamaterials based on both the rotating square mechanism and bistable units. Our results indicate that these systems support the propagation of nonlinear waves with properties that can be controlled by tuning the geometry of the structure and provide new opportunities to manipulate highly nonlinear elastic pulses.

Professor Katia Bertoldi, Harvard University

Host: Michelle Driscoll

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Complex Systems