Tensile Deformation Prediction tagged posts

A soft architected material that, due to the tension instability, undergoes a pattern transformation when biaxially stretched. Credit: Johannes T.B. Overvelde/Harvard SEAS

Imagine pulling or compressing a block of soft material – like rubber – equally in all directions. You wouldn’t expect the block to deform much because of the nature of the material. However, in 1948, an applied mathematician named Ronald Rivlin predicted that with the right amount of tensile force, a thick cube of soft material would suddenly deform into a thin, flat plate. For almost 70 years, this prediction remained purely theoretical. Materials scientists, hoping to add the instability to the pantheon of material functionality, were unable to prove the theory experimentally.

Recently, researchers at Harvard John A...