Engineers at UC Irvine and Georgia Tech have created a new class of ultralightweight mechanical metamaterials based on tensegrity, in which isolated rigid bars are held in a mesh of tensioned tethers. The lattices spread deformation throughout the structure instead of failing locally, giving a 25-fold gain in deformability and orders-of-magnitude higher energy absorption than comparable lattice materials. Prof. Rimoli, then at Georgia Tech, conceived the periodic tensegrity lattices, and lab member Julie Kraus co-authored the work with Jens Bauer, Cameron Crook, and Prof. Lorenzo Valdevit of UCI. The study appeared in Advanced Materials with support from NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Read the full story: UCI-led team creates new ultralightweight, crush-resistant tensegrity metamaterials (UCI News).