2023/10/02 by Harsh Jain, Jain, Harsh, Shankar Ghosh +1 · 1 voice
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft #physics.comp-ph #physics.pop-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.01115
openalex publication_date 2023/10/02 · arxiv published 2023/10/02 · arxiv updated 2023/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present emergent mechanical memory storage behavior in soft cellular materials. The cellular materials are a network of soft hyperelastic rods which store shape changes, specifically local indentation. This happens under an applied global compressive strain on the material. The material transits under strain from an elastic state (capable of `forgetting' any applied indentation after un-indentation) to plastic state (indefinitely storing the shape change due to indentation). The memory can be erased via removal of applied global strains and is therefore re-programmable. We characterise this behaviour experimentally and present a simple model that makes use of friction for understanding this behavior.