Bio-inspired Design
The quest for the simultaneous full-scale attainment of strength and toughness in structural materials has traditionally been a trade-off. Despite many efforts, such synthetic composite has not yet been possible due to the lack of intelligent material design and manufacturing. Nature, on the other hand, overcomes such limitations by developing damage-tolerant composite materials through multiple length-scale internalized designs where the optimized composition of the hard phase (providing high strength) is packaged with soft organic phases (providing high toughness) in a complex architecture. Taking inspiration from nature’s complex designs, my research focuses on maximizing the combination of strength and toughness in brittle materials like ceramics, glass, and cement using bio-based soft polymers.
Figure. Damage-tolerant ceramic schwarzites
Metamaterials Design
Architecture plays a significant role in the mechanical efficiency of structures. In a new class of architected structure named ‘mechanical metamaterial’, one can achieve unique and tailorable mechanical properties by changing the topology of designed structures such as tunable stiffness, negative compression ratio, negative compressibility, and vanishing shear modulus through rationally engineered deformation mechanisms. While these benefits have mainly been observed at the micro- or nanoscale, my research aims to address the significant challenge of scaling up these nanoscale features to create macro-scale materials. I focus on developing multiscale meta-structures with optimized topologies to maximize the combination of mechanical properties in structural materials. My goal is to develop lightweight mechanical meta-structures with unconventional mechanical properties, extending the property space of known materials.