RII Track-4: NSF: Soft Architected Metamaterials for Extreme Energy Dissipation

Designing innovative lightweight materials and structures with significant energy dissipation against dynamic mechanical loads is critical for protection and effective performance of assets and personnel in operational conditions. Soft architected metamaterials (SAMs) consisting of spatially periodic microstructures show new and/or customized energy dissipation behaviors due to the interplay between material properties and geometry.

Despite the promise, there remains a lack of fundamental understanding of deformation mechanisms and energy dissipation pathways in SAMs, as well as the structure-property relationships that could be leveraged to devise novel structural arrangements for enhanced survivability. With support from the primary research collaborator Prof. Weinong Chen at Purdue University (PU), this project aims to investigate the deformation and failure mechanisms of SAMs subjected to dynamic mechanical loading using a combined computational and experimental approach.

The fundamental insights gained through this research project will enable the development of advanced architected materials and fill the knowledge gap to engineer architected metamaterials for enhanced energy dissipation. The collaboration between the PI and the collaborator will not only lay a foundation for continued research between the two institutions but will also strengthen the research competitiveness of the PI’s research group and benefit students, University of Louisville, and the State of Kentucky through the PI’s synergistic workforce training, curriculum development, and outreach activities.

This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows project provides a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a graduate student at the University of Louisville at Kentucky. The overarching goal of the research research is to investigate active and reconfigurable control of low amplitude elastic wave propagation and high-velocity impact energy dissipation mechanisms of SAMs through a new collaboration with Prof.

Weinong Chen at PU. To achieve this goal, the PI will bring his expertise in metamaterial design and modeling. The primary collaborator will provide complementary expertise in novel dynamic material characterization techniques at high loading rates.

The unique modified Kolsky compression bar and high-speed synchrotron X-ray phase contrast imaging system at PU is essential to capture the real-time fracture processes in SAMs, including damage initiation and propagation during impact events and the interaction between multiple failure modes. These experiments will be critically integrated with modeling work to advance the research by calibrating model parameters and validating models.

The specific research objectives and methods are to (1) construct an advanced modeling environment using a suite of building blocks with behaviors modeled through a physics-based constitutive material model, (2) develop high-fidelity multiphysics and multiscale computational models for strain engineered elastic wave propagation and impact energy dissipation, respectively, and (3) experimentally characterize elastic wave propagation using a 3D scanning laser Doppler vibrometer and real-time damage of SAM prototypes using the high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging system. Successful completion of the proposed research will significantly advance our fundamental understanding of the dynamic mechanical behavior of SAMs and will ultimately facilitate the design of novel architected metamaterials with improved energy dissipation capabilities that can serve in harsh operating environments.

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.