Structural Systems Inspired by the Architecture of Skeletal Muscle

Nonlinear dynamics;Mechanical metamaterials;Bio-inspired;Mechanical Engineering;Engineering;Mechanical Engineering

Kidambi, NarayananPerkins, Noel C ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Nonlinear dynamics;    Mechanical metamaterials;    Bio-inspired;    Mechanical Engineering;    Engineering;    Mechanical Engineering;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/145893/kidambi_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Modern engineering applications call for structural and material systems that exhibit advanced performance. To achieve this performance, researchers often look to nature for inspiration. Skeletal muscle is a multifunctional system with remarkable versatility and robustness, offering a great example on how to effectively store, convert, and release energy for force generation and shape change. To date, most efforts seeking to emulate muscle have focused on its bulk characteristics. However, it has recently been shown that many of muscle’s advantageous properties arise from the assembly and geometry of its microscale constituents. This dissertation will aim to develop new concepts for structural and material systems inspired by a fundamental understanding of the assembly of muscle’s constituent elements into contractile units. This is achieved by exploiting two key ingredients expressed by these constituents: metastability, which is the existence of multiple stable conformations for a prescribed global geometry, and ¬¬local conformation changes to switch between these stable topologies. Rather than faithfully emulating or seeking to explain the complex chemo-mechanical processes that govern muscle contraction, the major contributions of this thesis arise from the exploitation of the aforementioned key features within the context of engineered structures and materials systems.First, a fundamental metastable unit is studied under harmonic excitation. Experimental, numerical, and analytical investigations uncover the coexistence of multiple response regimes with significantly different amplitudes. These distinct regimes are exploited to achieve highly adaptable energy dissipation characteristics that vary by up to two orders of magnitude among them, even as excitation parameters are held constant. On the other hand, introducing asymmetry by varying a static bias parameter allows for smooth, finer variation of energy dissipation performance. Then, inspired by the ability of the myofibril lattice in skeletal muscle to trap strain energy that can be released on-demand, this thesis explores structural systems that leverage asymmetric multistability for energy capture and storage. The initial kinetic energy from impulsive excitation is shown to trigger state transitions that result in the capture of recoverable strain energy in higher-potential states. Reverse transitions to lower-energy states exploit this stored energy to facilitate efficient deployment and length change in the structure. Lastly, the effect of myofibril lattice spacing in skeletal muscle, and shear-like motions of adjacent filaments during contraction, serves as inspiration for the development of an architected modular material system that uses transverse confinements in conjunction with oblique, shear-like motions to give rise to sudden state transitions. Numerical results provide insight into the experimentally-observed behaviors, revealing that these energy-releasing transitions correspond to discrete changes in reaction force magnitude and direction Mechanical response properties can be tailored by strategic variation of transverse confinement and system geometry. Analytical tools using relatively simple models are developed to offer meaningful prediction of the above features. The overall outcomes of this thesis reveal great potential to develop high-performance, versatile, and adaptable structural and material systems by exploiting fundamental features of skeletal muscle architecture.