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Publication - Professor Jonathan Rossiter

    Shape memory polymer hexachiral auxetic structures with tunable stiffness


    Rossiter, JM, Takashima, K, Scarpa, F, Walters, P & Mukai, T, 2014, ‘Shape memory polymer hexachiral auxetic structures with tunable stiffness’. Smart Materials and Structures, vol 23.


    Planar auxetic structures have the potential to impact on a wide range of applications from deployable and morphing structures to space-filling composite and medical treatments. The ability to fabricate auxetics from smart materials greatly enhances this facility by building in controllable actuation and deployment. A smart auxetic device can be compressed and fixed into a storage state. When deployment is required the device can be appropriately stimulated and the stored elastic energy is released, resulting in a marked structural expansion. Instead of using a conventional external actuator to drive deployment the material is made to undergo phase transition where one stimulus (e.g. heat) initiates a mechanical response. Here we show how smart material auxetics can be realized using a thermally responsive shape memory polymer composites. We show how a shape memory polymer auxetic hexachiral structure can be tailored to provide a tunable stiffness response in its fully deployed state by varying the angle of inter-hub connections, and yet is still able to undergo thermally stimulated deployment.

    Full details in the University publications repository