Mechanics and inverse-design of thin shape-shifting structures

Recent progress in additive manufacturing and materials engineering has led to a surge of interest in shape-changing plate and shell-like structures. Such structures are typically printed in a planar configuration and, when exposed to an ambient stimulus such as heat or humidity, swell into a desired three-dimensional geometry. Viewed through the lens of differential geometry and elasticity, the application of the physical stimulus can be understood as a local change in the metric of a two dimensional surface embedded in three dimensions. In this talk we present our numerical approach for simulating the elastic response to such a metric change for thin structures. We also show our theoretical contributions on the inverse-design of shape-shifting bilayers, and discuss how these developments have led to the design and experimental realization of a 4D printed lattice that can undergo complex shape changes.