Session: Rising Stars of Mechanical Engineering Celebration & Showcase

Paper Number: 148651

148651 - Mechanics of Architected Materials: Self-Architecture and Dynamic Responses 

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will focus on providing a fundamental mechanical understanding of self-architected materials, i.e., materials whose three-dimensional (3D) architecture is determined by natural processes as opposed to being designed a priori by humans. The integrated computational and experimental approach will concentrate on relating geometric parameters such as curvature to the resulting mechanical responses, providing mechanics-based design guidelines and predictive tools for this family of metamaterials. Self-architected materials with 3D architectures at the nano-to-microscale present a potential route for scalable nanomaterials that are lightweight and attain extreme mechanical properties, but their curvature-to-mechanical property relation remains largely unknown. This research project will contribute to filling those fundamental knowledge gaps by providing a knowledge base that facilitates the design of new types of lightweight centimeter-scale materials with aperiodic self-architected nanoscale features that do not rely on advanced additive manufacturing, and whose mechanical properties could surpass those of classical architected materials. Uncovering the mechanics of self-architected materials can lead to advanced lightweight structural materials for aerospace applications, protective coatings for defense capabilities, and design principles for resilient engineered materials—all of which would contribute towards solving ongoing mechanics-of-materials engineering challenges. An integrated educational and outreach program will accompany research efforts, focusing on virtual and in-person engagement of K-12 students and educators—including an augmented reality framework—introducing design, fabrication, and experiments on 3D architected materials to a broader audience, particularly to underrepresented (e.g., Hispanic) groups. 

 

The specific objective of this project is to uncover geometry-to-mechanics relations for self-architected materials, such as those derived via spinodal decomposition processes, that enable prediction and understanding of their mechanical properties such as their stiffness, strength, and fracture toughness as a function of curvature distribution. Expanding on the concept that negative Gaussian curvature provides stretching-dominated deformation in shell-based architected materials, this project seeks to significantly expand on this curvature-induced benefit by determining how the directionality of negative-curvature enhances the mechanical properties. The proposed approach will integrate four thrusts that include scalable fabrication of the phase-separation self-architected materials, computational frameworks to design and predict the mechanical properties of desirable morphologies, and nanomechanical experiments on both naturally self-architected samples and on 3D-printed microscale prototypes. Most research efforts will concentrate on understanding curvature-dependent beyond-linear effective properties and failure mechanisms of self-architected materials, towards the design of lightweight but tough scalable architected materials.  In addition, these efforts have recently encompassed the establishment of novel high-throughput characterization route that leverage wave propagation within microscopic metamaterials. These efforts have complemented the above work towards establishing the architecture-and direction-dependent properties of metamaterials in a previously unexplored dynamic regime. 

Presenting Author: Carlos Portela MIT

Presenting Author Biography: Carlos Portela is the d’Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Dr. Portela received his Ph.D. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, where he was given the Centennial Award for the best thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering. His current research lies at the intersection of materials science, mechanics, and nano-to-macro fabrication with the objective of designing and testing novel materials—with features spanning from nanometers to centimeters—that yield unprecedented mechanical and acoustic properties. Dr. Portela’s recent accomplishments have provided routes for fabrication of these so-called ‘nano-architected materials’ in scalable processes as well as testing nanomaterials in real-world conditions such as supersonic impact. Dr. Portela received the 2023 Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching at MIT, was recognized as an MIT TR Innovator Under 35 in 2022, and was a recipient of the 2022 NSF CAREER Award and the 2019 Gold Paper Award from the Society of Engineering Science (SES).

Authors:

Carlos Portela MIT