NSF-BSF: Nonlinearity, Randomness, and Dynamics: Vistas into the Extreme Mechanics of Non-Euclidean Sheets

The notion of self-morphing sheets is a novel concept that has emerged in diverse setups, such as laboratory experiments, biomechanics of living organisms, design and architecture, soft robotics, and mathematical analysis. Self-morphing sheets are thin objects that can drive large changes of their shapes through internal forces, and exploit such shape changes for different purposes, including locomotion.

The interdisciplinary character of the activities offers opportunities for training scientists and mathematicians in technical skills, as well as in their ability to abstract, model, and design complex systems for practical applications. The research involves investigators in Israel and in the United States, adding to the rich and longstanding history of scientific collaborations between the two nations.

Self-morphing sheets are thin objects that can drive large changes of their shapes through internal forces, and exploit such shape changes for different purposes, including locomotion. This project, an endeavor between an experimental physicist and an applied mathematician, will develop novel experimental and theoretical tools in an integrated framework to model, design, build, actuate, and control a group of such objects, known as hyperbolic thin sheets.

The results can be applied to questions ranging from how marine invertebrates swim to the design of self-actuated soft robots.

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.