Mesostructured Cellular Materials: Early Prototypes

These structures are about deformation, flexibility, and form and explore the relationship between innate material properties and bulk mechanical properties through intentional structuring of the material. This deliberate design of the material gives it unique properties, two of which are especially interesting: synclastic bending and auxetic behavior. Synclastic materials have the fascinating ability to assume compound curvature along two (often orthogonal) directions [(see here for a basic illustration of synclastic bending)](http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/35/6/519/F1/graphic-4.small.gif "synclastic illustration"). One can wrap a sphere easily in a synclastic material without folding it whereas attempting the same with an anticlastic material, such as paper, would require numerous folds. Auxetic behavior is found in materials with a negative Poission's ratio, which relates the deformation in one direction when the material is stressed in a perpendicular direction [(See he