Programmable Mechanical Metamaterials

We create mechanical metamaterials whose response to uniaxial compression can be programmed by lateral confinement, allowing monotonic, nonmonotonic, and hysteretic behavior. These functionalities arise from a broken rotational symmetry which causes highly nonlinear coupling of deformations along the two primary axes of these metamaterials. We introduce a soft mechanism model which captures the programmable mechanics, and outline a general design strategy for confined mechanical metamaterials. Finally, we show how inhomogeneous confinement can be explored to create multistability and giant hysteresis.Received 15 July 2014DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.175503© 2014 American Physical Society