Dynamics of Reconfigurable Strawlike Elements

Abstract

Reconfigurable metamaterials have attracted significant attention due to their cross-disciplinary importance, with applications from deployable space structures to soft robots. These applications might benefit from high-dimensional stable deformations under minimal actuation, which known structures have not demonstrated. The authors present a comprehensive dynamical model and experiments based on pressurized strawlike elements, which are lattices of ungrounded unit cells with high-order multistability. These elements can maintain a myriad of complex stable configurations and exhibit complex dynamical transitions---properties that pave the way toward significant engineering advances.