Mechanical-Responsive Materials: Properties, Design, and Applications

Mechanical loads, such as compressive, tensile, and shear forces, are the most well-known and traditional stimuli affecting the world continuously. Force, pressure, or deformation are all mechanical stimuli frequently present in biological systems. With body motions, most biological tissues constantly encounter numerous kinds of mechanical stimulation. The mechanical characteristics of the surrounding medium have shown to influence stem cell development. Mechano-responsive materials can quickly change their physiochemical characteristics in response to mechanical force or deformation. They are used to create artificial muscles, photo-mobile materials, soft actuators inspired by living things, inorganic-organic hybrid materials, multi-responsive composite materials, and strain sensor materials. The introduction of mechanical stimuli, material characteristics regarding these kinds of stimuli, constitutive behavior of materials, different types of responses, and uses of mechanically sensitive materials are described in this chapter.