Programmable Mechanical Metamaterial

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 2016, approximately 1.4 million people died in road traffic accidents worldwide. One method of decreasing road casualties is by enhancing vehicle crashworthiness, and a potential method to improving vehicle crashworthiness is by using mechanical metamaterials. Mechanical metamaterials are materials that possesses unique material characteristics due to the physical structure architecture of the material rather than the properties of the material itself. As a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) my project focuses on defining and developing a computational framework for the programming of the internal structure of mechanical metamaterials in order to optimise its response to different loading scenarios; and to validate the framework through experimentation. While at Kyushu University, the experimental aspect of my project – manufacturing of specimens using 3D printer, material characterisation and compressions/crush tests – will be carried out. Furthermore, optimisation and validation of my computational framework will be carried out.