CAREER: Nudging and Leveraging the Onset of Buckling in Architected Materials for Performance Gains

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports research that combines ideas drawn from complex algebra, applied mathematics, engineering mechanics, and applied physics to advance the fundamental understanding and controlling of the onset of micro-buckling and post micro-buckling behavior of architected materials. The mechanics and materials communities have turned their interest to using material architecture centered on unit cell designs to enable exotic material properties and functionalities, giving rise to the field known as architected materials. The unusual sets of properties and functionalities observed in architected materials are often obtained by deliberatively exploiting elastic micro-buckling, i.e., instability in the shape of the cell walls and edges forming the material due to loading. This research project will create a pathway for fine-tuning the micro-buckling instabilities in architected materials to harness tailored mechanical behaviors. The research outcomes have the potential to impact applications in medicine, transportation, aerospace, construction, and personnel protection. The award will also support an extensive education plan to broaden the participation of Latinx and Hispanics students in the STEM enterprise through curriculum improvements, outreach activities at a local museum for children, dissemination of research through YouTube videos, and recruitment, mentoring and training of undergraduate and graduate students.The objective of this CAREER research program is to generate a new understanding of how the onset of elastic micro-buckling in periodic architected materials can be modified, controlled, and designed to achieve desired post micro-buckling behavior and thus, custom and tunable effective mechanical behaviors. The key intellectual contributions of this research are: (1) a novel computational framework based on hypercomplex finite element method to quantify and rank the influence of design parameters and their interactions; (2) a new method based on moment-based fast uncertainty quantification that predicts the variability due to uncertainties emanating from fabrication and loading conditions; and (3) the concept of the physical “nudge” as a mechanism to transition between the available buckling states and, thus, to control the onset of micro-buckling in architected materials. The nudge could be initiated through material actuation, structural design, or any other suitable measure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.