Two plastic rectangular boxes, one woven and one a continuous sheet. Center, Axial buckling: Hands crush each box, compressing it inward. Center, Torsional buckling: Hands twist each box. Right, After: The woven box is the same shape as before. The continuous box is deformed, unable to hold the weight.
Engineers at the University of Michigan have found that ancient basket-weaving techniques could be the key to creating a new class of resilient and stiff materials for the 21st century.
The research shows that woven materials can endure repeated compression and return to their original form, a discovery that could advance material design.
The idea was sparked when doctoral student Guowei Wayne Tu, the lead author, found an article dating woven baskets to around 7500 BCE (roughly 9,525 years ago).
The researchers, including Professor Evgueni Filipov, began to question if the ancient craft’s longevity was due to more than just its aesthetics and ability to form 3D shapes.
“We knew weaving is an effective way of creating 3D shapes from ribbons like reed and bark, but we suspected there must also be underlying mechanical advantages,” said Filipov, corresponding author of the study.
Stress management in structures
To test this hypothesis, the team constructed structures by weaving Mylar polyester ribbons into a 3D metamaterial—a synthetic composite with properties not found in natural materials
The researchers built two structures using Mylar polyester: one set with four different woven corner arrangements and a second set with continuous, unwoven Mylar.
The woven and unwoven structures were crushed to compare their performance.
The continuous material was permanently damaged and buckled under pressure, while the woven structures were unaffected, even after being crushed to less than 20 percent of their original height.
The team conducted high-resolution 3D scans to understand why the woven structures were resilient. The secret lies in how stress is managed.
It showcased that concentrated stress caused the continuous material to buckle and deform at specific points. On the other hand, the woven design redistributed the stress over a wider area, thereby preventing permanent damage.
Wide usage of such metamaterials
The study also disproved the common misconception that woven systems are inherently flexible.
The team found that their woven structures were 70 percent as stiff as their continuous counterparts.
The woven material showed strength and resilience in tests of more complex designs.
Furthermore, a four-legged robot prototype could hold 25 times its weight and move, and when overloaded, it would return to its original shape and remain functional.
“With these few fundamental corner-shaped modules, we can design and easily fabricate woven surfaces and structural systems that have complex spatial geometries and are both stiff and resilient. There is just so much more potential for how we could use these corner-based woven structures for future engineering design,” said Tu.
This combination of resilience and stiffness makes them ideal for applications where both load-bearing capacity and long-term durability are crucial.
It could be used for various modern applications, including robotics, car parts, and architectural components.
The researchers have already designed a conceptual woven exoskeleton that can adjust its stiffness to provide support and shock absorption for different body parts.
Up next, the goal is to turn these woven materials into “smart” systems by integrating electronics for sensing the environment and changing shape as needed.
The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.
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