Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping

Many species can dynamically alter their skin textures to enhance their motility and survivability. Despite the enormous efforts on designing bio‐inspired materials with tunable surface textures, developing spatiotemporally programmable and reconfigurable textural morphing without complex control re...

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Main Authors: Yuzhen Chen, Tianzhen Liu, Lihua Jin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2022-09-01
Series:Advanced Intelligent Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/aisy.202100270
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author Yuzhen Chen
Tianzhen Liu
Lihua Jin
author_facet Yuzhen Chen
Tianzhen Liu
Lihua Jin
author_sort Yuzhen Chen
collection DOAJ
description Many species can dynamically alter their skin textures to enhance their motility and survivability. Despite the enormous efforts on designing bio‐inspired materials with tunable surface textures, developing spatiotemporally programmable and reconfigurable textural morphing without complex control remains challenging. Herein, a design strategy is proposed to achieve surfaces with such properties. The surfaces comprise an array of unit cells with broadly tailored temporal responses. By arranging the unit cells differently, the surfaces can exhibit various spatiotemporal responses, which can be easily reconfigured by disassembling and rearranging the unit cells. Specifically, viscoelastic shells as the unit cells is adopted, which can be pneumatically actuated to a concave state, and recover the initial convex state sometime after the load is removed. It is shown computationally and experimentally that the recovery time can be widely tuned by the geometry and material viscoelasticity of the shells. By assembling such shells with different recovery times, surfaces with pre‐programmed spatiotemporal textural morphing under simple pneumatic actuation is built, and temporal evolution of patterns, such as digit numbers and emoji, and spatiotemporal control of friction are demonstrated. This work opens up new avenues in designing spatiotemporal morphing surfaces that could be employed for programming mechanical, optical, and electrical properties. A preprint version of the article can be found at: https://www.authorea.com/doi/full/10.22541/au.164020946.62560710.
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spelling doaj.art-63a0cd7a07544eb2acb3d06f538b86122022-12-22T04:06:00ZengWileyAdvanced Intelligent Systems2640-45672022-09-0149n/an/a10.1002/aisy.202100270Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell SnappingYuzhen Chen0Tianzhen Liu1Lihua Jin2Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USADepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USADepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USAMany species can dynamically alter their skin textures to enhance their motility and survivability. Despite the enormous efforts on designing bio‐inspired materials with tunable surface textures, developing spatiotemporally programmable and reconfigurable textural morphing without complex control remains challenging. Herein, a design strategy is proposed to achieve surfaces with such properties. The surfaces comprise an array of unit cells with broadly tailored temporal responses. By arranging the unit cells differently, the surfaces can exhibit various spatiotemporal responses, which can be easily reconfigured by disassembling and rearranging the unit cells. Specifically, viscoelastic shells as the unit cells is adopted, which can be pneumatically actuated to a concave state, and recover the initial convex state sometime after the load is removed. It is shown computationally and experimentally that the recovery time can be widely tuned by the geometry and material viscoelasticity of the shells. By assembling such shells with different recovery times, surfaces with pre‐programmed spatiotemporal textural morphing under simple pneumatic actuation is built, and temporal evolution of patterns, such as digit numbers and emoji, and spatiotemporal control of friction are demonstrated. This work opens up new avenues in designing spatiotemporal morphing surfaces that could be employed for programming mechanical, optical, and electrical properties. A preprint version of the article can be found at: https://www.authorea.com/doi/full/10.22541/au.164020946.62560710.https://doi.org/10.1002/aisy.202100270pneumatic actuationpseudo-bistabilityreconfigurablespatiotemporal programmingtextural morphingviscoelastic shell
spellingShingle Yuzhen Chen
Tianzhen Liu
Lihua Jin
Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
Advanced Intelligent Systems
pneumatic actuation
pseudo-bistability
reconfigurable
spatiotemporal programming
textural morphing
viscoelastic shell
title Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
title_full Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
title_fullStr Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
title_full_unstemmed Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
title_short Spatiotemporally Programmable Surfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping
title_sort spatiotemporally programmable surfaces via viscoelastic shell snapping
topic pneumatic actuation
pseudo-bistability
reconfigurable
spatiotemporal programming
textural morphing
viscoelastic shell
url https://doi.org/10.1002/aisy.202100270
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AT tianzhenliu spatiotemporallyprogrammablesurfacesviaviscoelasticshellsnapping
AT lihuajin spatiotemporallyprogrammablesurfacesviaviscoelasticshellsnapping