Periodic Pattern formation in Active Architected Materials

Self-organization in biological and chemical systems is typically a consequence of the system's far-from-equilibrium condition. The complexity of the internal processes in these systems restricts the analytical understanding to that derived from phenomenological models. Alternatively, the dynamics of engineered systems may be understood via Newton's laws and, through this understanding, more readily customized for functionality. Recently, architected materials (AMs) featuring active constituents have begun to populate the literature on, e.g., elastic wave non-reciprocity and odd elasticity. Inspired by the similarity in the construction of the phenomenological models governing self-organization in biological/chemical systems and models derived from first principles that govern, e.g., the elastodynamics of materials, we design and experimentally realize an AM with active constituents that demonstrates non-equilibrium pattern formation in the displacement field.

AMs may have applications for passive flow control owing to their ability to accommodate peculiar structural behavior, e.g., truncation resonances and multi-stable morphology. These structural behaviors could possibly couple with modal and non-modal mechanisms in fluids and interact with the dynamics of turbulent flows. The proposed AM may find utility in realizing autonomous morphable surfaces, relevant to flow control applications.