Featured in Nature Materials (21, 869-876, 2022, IF 47.656) as Cover Story
The research group, led by Chair Prof. L. Cheng in ME, has made good progress in the development of acoustic/elastic/mechanical metamaterials. Recent research results are published in prestigious journals like Nature Materials, National Science Review, Journal of Mechanics of physics and Solids, Acta Materialia and Physics Review applied etc.
Their latest work on programmable gear-based mechanical metamaterials was published in the latest issue of Nature Materials (21, 869-876, 2022, IF 47.656) as cover story. The new design leads to unprecedented tunability and programmability based on gear clusters embracing traditional Chinese Taiji pattern. The work was also reported by Nature (606, 2022) as research highlight, which states “Sheets of connected gears made from various materials can morph from soft and deformable to extremely stiff, all while bearing heavy loads … Such clusters of gears could be a way to make machine parts that have controllable elasticity but are still strong. For example, robots with appendages that soften and stiffen on demand would be able to jump and grab objects easily”. The paper was the fruit of the research work of Dr Fang Xin, Hong Kong scholar in ME under the supervision of Prof. Cheng, in collaboration with National University of Defense Technology and Fraunhofer for Mechanics of Materials, Germany.
Meanwhile, significant progress has been made on the topological design of metasurface for acoustic and elastic wave manipulation. In particular, the group proposed a systematic inverse design paradigm, which leads to a new class of metasurfaces allowing for various exotic wave functionalities (steering, focusing, levitation). They reported the combined effects of topology-specific internal resonances, bi-anisotropic and multiple scattering, which lead to record-breaking broadband and achromatic material properties. The work was online published in National Science Review (IF 23.178) with Dr. Dong Haowen as the leading author, who is another Hong Kong scholar working with Prof. Cheng (2019-2020). Other related works on broadband pentamode metamaterials and elastic waves have also been published in prestigious journals like Journal of Mechanics of physics and Solids 2020, 2021), Acta Materialia (2019) and Physical Review Applied (2022).
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