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Programming and reprogramming metamaterials
The development of mechanical metamaterials rapidly grows and explores multiple strategies to design functional materials. Essentially a function relies on a internal structural property, so that a radical change of function often requires redesigning a new structure from scratch. Pre-encoding several functions in one single structure is a corner stone towards designing truly reprogrammable mechanical metamaterials. In this talk I will discuss a new strategy we have investigated. We construct a metamaterial by assembling non-commuting unit cells. Each unit can be actuated by two external inputs, say A and B such that actuating A then B is different than B then A. We propose a rationale design to encode this non-commuting property. Finally by assembling multiple unit cells we obtain what we call a noncommuting material and I will present some of its emerging properties.