Elasticity and Stability of Shape Changing Structures

Abstract: As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion, or stretching and bending. The competition between the latter can cause elastic instabilities, and over the last fifteen years these instabilities have provided a multitude of ways to prescribe and control shape change. Buckling, wrinkling, folding, creasing, snapping have become mechanisms that when harmoniously combined enable mechanical metamaterials, self-folding origami, ultralight and ultrathin kirigami, and structures that appear to grow from one shape to another. In this review, I aim to connect the fundamentals of elastic instabilities to the advanced functionality currently found within mechanical metamaterials.