Research

The characteristics of metamaterials include not only properties that are challenging to find in conventional materials, such as very low density or extremely high stiffness, but also include that are impossible to achieve with existing materials. In addition to negative density or negative stiffness mentioned earlier, metamaterials may have properties that cannot be explained by traditional solid mechanics. For instance, metamaterials can exhibit different behavior when compressed from the left or right – such characteristic cannot be expressed through the conventional stress-strain relationship. Exploring and explaining these unique characteristics, and further advancing challenging research to design metamaterials for practical applications in mechanical systems, are one of our major research topics.