Conventional material design focuses on engineering the chemistry and microstructure of solids. Metamaterials go beyond these classical approaches. They are artificial materials that are built from spatially structured building blocks, like lattice-truss architectures. The integration of these rational architectures at the material level grants metamaterials unique unconventional properties which are inaccessible with classical material designs.

The course covers the fundamentals of the mechanics of different metamaterial architectures, discusses design principles and applicable fabrication techniques from the macro- to the nanoscale, as well as their interdependency, and considers emerging application scenarios in medicine, aerospace, microsystem technology, and mobility.

The students learn

• to design beam, shell and plate-based spatial architectures, such as for extreme strength & stiffness, programmable/adaptive behaviors and negative effective properties.
• to mathematically describe and predict the mechanical behavior of such architectural designs.
• the fundamentals of applicable fabrication techniques, including foaming, assembly and 3D-printing, and their design and material implications 
• the relationship between architecture & size and how micro- and nanoscale architectures can leverage extreme physical size effects. 

preliminary knowledge in mathematics, physics and materials science recommended

regular attendance: 22,5 hours

self-study: 97,5 hours

oral exam: ca. 30 minutes

no tools or reference materials

Gibson, L. J. & Ashby, M. F. Cellular Solids: Structure and properties. (Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2001).

Fleck, N. A., Deshpande, V. S. & Ashby, M. F. Micro-architectured materials: past, present and future. Proc. R. Soc. A Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 466, 2495–2516 (2010).

Bauer, J. et al. Nanolattices: An Emerging Class of Mechanical Metamaterials. Adv. Mater. 29, 1701850 (2017).

Jiao, P., Mueller, J., Raney, J. R., Zheng, X. (Rayne) & Alavi, A. H. Mechanical metamaterials and beyond. Nat. Commun. 2023 141 14, 1–17 (2023).