Innovative Design and Processing of Multi Functional Adaptive Structural Materials
Abstract Our project on adaptive structural materials began with bone as a source of inspiration for adaptive materials systems. Examining the structure of natural bone leads to the five guiding principles for our research: (i) load bearing by hierarchically porous materials; (ii) adaptive, sensing load and supplying mass to reinforce at load bearing sites through material deposition and dissolution; (iii) transport of materials using fluid flow through low density porous cy systems; (iv) energy to drive processes taken from storage sites, which are replenished by internal or external energy generation; (v) mechanisms, which are not fully understood for bone, but knowing the fundamental mechanisms allows these to be adjusted for application to synthetic systems. The problem as defined in the third year of the program was how to change soft materials into hard structures reversibly, in response to load or other environmental stresses. The approaches we used in the third year of the program include (i) reversible jamming, layering, welding and/or percolation; (ii) dissipative materials; and (iii) granular chemistry.