A very curious new architected material
snip
...
Experiments from the Caltech lab of Chiara Daraio, G. Bradford Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, have yielded a fascinating new type of matter, neither granular nor crystalline, that responds to some stresses as a fluid would and to others like a solid. The new material, known as PAM (for polycatenated architected materials) could have uses in areas ranging from helmets and other protective gear to biomedical devices and robotics.
PAMs are not found in nature, though their basic form is known to us through the millennia-old manufacture of chain mail: small metal rings linked together to form a mesh, most often used as a flexible form of armor. PAMs, however, are like chain mail on steroids. Following the basic principle of interlocking shapes, like those found in a chain, PAMs are made up of a variety of shapes linked together to form three-dimensional patterns whose configurations are almost unimaginably variable. The resulting materials, which Daraio and her colleagues have rendered using 3D printers, exhibit behaviors not found in other types of materials.
...
Comments