Would you rather run into a brick wall or a mattress? For most people, the choice is not difficult. A brick wall is weak, it does not tolerate shocks or vibrations; The mattress is soft and absorbs shock well. Sometimes when you are creating something, these two things are important. The material should vibrate well, but should be strong enough to not collapse under pressure. A team of researchers from the UvA Institute of Physics has now found a way to create materials (Buckle up! A New Class Materials Arrived) that manage to do both.
Often the two characteristics of a material are mutually exclusive: the material is weak or it can absorb noise well – but rarely both. However, if we can create materials that are strong and able to absorb vibrations, there will be many possible applications, from nanoscale design to aerospace engineering.
Buckling does the trick
A group of researchers at the University of Amsterdam has now found a way to create (Buckle up! A New Class Materials Arrived) solid materials, and can absorb vibrations and, as necessary, can remain warm. David Dykstra, a co-author of the book, explains: “We found that the trick is to use perishable materials, like metal sheets. When judiciously put together, such intricately woven pieces of paper become a formidable force – and at the same time, they Save a lot of the hard stuff that they’re made of. In addition, the paper does not need to be very large, so the object can remain small. This picture shows an example of what this plate is used to combine all the required elements.
Large number of Applications
Researchers have analyzed the properties of these deeply deformed materials and found that they all exhibit this magical combination of stiffness and the ability to disperse noise. As things are known without the requirement of a combination of properties, the new laboratory materials (or metamaterials) have a large number of applications that can be made, and in a large number of scales. Possible uses range from the meter scale (think air, automotive applications, and many other common designs) to the microscale (applications such as microscopes or nanolithography). Dykstra: “Humans love to build things – big and small – and we almost always want those things to be light. If this can be done with strong and attractive materials, many existing designs can be improved and many new designs are possible. There is literally no end to the possible applications!
Source: University of Amsterdam
