Surface Morphing from Pneumatically Actuated Metastrips

Morphing structures offer the potential to adapt to a wide range of operational conditions, maintaining optimal performance. However, systems for morphing must avoid the costs associated with increased complexity and added weight. Dome-patterned structures offer a way to realize morphing by inverting load-carrying, pneumatically actuated dome units that collectively provide complex shape reconfiguration. This type of morphing can be tuned by changing the size and the number of domes placed on the structure. Furthermore, the design space for morphed shapes can be extended by designing the placement and sizing of individual domes. In this work, we design a surface that can morph between multiple desired smooth surfaces using dome-patterned metastrips. To achieve this, our design approach divides the surface into strip-wide sections, uses finite element (FE) simulations to predict their structural response and morphed shapes. An optimization-based design method is then followed to determine the spatial distribution, number, and size of domes forming each strip. The resulting dome-patterned sections are fused to form the designed surface capable of adopting multiple designed shapes. The final surface is designed and programmed to morph between two desired shapes. The presented dome-patterned structures offer a rich reconfiguration space and low local strains, thereby providing a path to realizing load-carrying, low-complexity morphing systems.