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Self-Foldable Origami-Architected Metamaterials

Project description

Origami-inspired architecture to improve metamaterials’ functionalities

Technological progress, coupled with escalating environmental challenges, necessitates the development of advanced design strategies to enhance the functionalities of materials. The ERC-funded S-FOAM project aims to integrate origami and kirigami capabilities into architectured cellular structures. The envisioned metamaterials will encompass a combination of attributes such as multistability, anisotropy, geometrical frustration, localised deformation control and controlled ellipticity loss. These attributes will facilitate the achievement of self-foldability and shape-morphing, triggered by external stimuli. The project will rely on solid mechanics, structural analysis principles and numerical simulations, as well as experimental tools to develop models for the optimal design of origami- and kirigami-lattice metamaterials. These metamaterials will find application in soft robotics and wearable devices.

Objective

Technological progress and increasingly environmental-related problems call for new cutting-edge design strategies to improve materials’ functionalities. The S-FOAM's challenge is to breakthrough metamaterial design by implanting origami/kirigami capabilities within architected cellular structures at different scales, thus bringing metamaterials to unprecedented mechanical performance.
The resulting metamaterials will combine multistability, anisotropy, geometrical frustration, control of localized deformation, and ellipticity loss to achieve a new capability: self-foldability and shape-morphing induced by external stimuli.
Unlike what happens in currently available origami, the location of the creases is not a priori imposed, but self-guided by ellipticity loss, occurring in the homogenized material, equivalent to the kirigami/origami, and self-controlled by embedding within the microstructure topological point and line defects. This introduces an unexplored field of research in which a material element will become able to mechanically react to actions from the surroundings through a direct change in its shape, thus reaching a configuration that optimizes its stiffness, strength, toughness, and, in a word, its environmental resilience.
The research project S-FOAM will develop modelling based on the mechanics of solids and structures, numerical simulations, and experimental tools for the optimal design of origami/kirigami-lattice metamaterials.
Applications are envisaged in soft robotics where grippers grasp and manipulate objects without damaging them, and in wearable devices where materials gently adapt to humans’ movements. Moreover, the design principle provided by S-FOAM is of great interest in developing adaptive medical devices and in maximizing solar power intake through flexible PVs integrated into metamaterials capable of changing shape depending on the sun motion.

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 930 096,00
Address
VIA CALEPINA 14
38122 Trento
Italy

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Region
Nord-Est Provincia Autonoma di Trento Trento
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 930 096,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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