Programmable and robust static topological solitons in mechanical metamaterials

Yafei Zhang, Bo Li, Q. S. Zheng, Guy M. Genin and C. Q. Chen ()
Additional contact information
Yafei Zhang: Tsinghua University
Bo Li: Tsinghua University
Q. S. Zheng: Tsinghua University
Guy M. Genin: Washington University
C. Q. Chen: Tsinghua University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Solitary, persistent wave packets called solitons hold potential to transfer information and energy across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales in physical, chemical, and biological systems. Mechanical solitons characteristically emerge either as a single wave packet or uncorrelated propagating topological entities through space and/or time, but these are notoriously difficult to control. Here, we report a theoretical framework for programming static periodic topological solitons into a metamaterial, and demonstrate its implementation in real metamaterials computationally and experimentally. The solitons are excited by deformation localizations under quasi-static compression, and arise from buckling-induced kink-antikink bands that provide domain separation barriers. The soliton number and wavelength demonstrate a previously unreported size-dependence, due to intrinsic length scales. We identify that these unanticipated solitons stem from displacive phase transitions with periodic topological excitations captured by the well-known $${\varphi }^{4}$$φ4 theory. Results reveal pathways for robust regularizations of stochastic responses of metamaterials.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13546-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13546-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13546-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().