Buckling under pressure
Inspired by a spherical toy that expands and collapses, researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a new type of engineered capsule, called a “buckliball,” that exploits the phenomenon of buckling. The same types of mechanisms that allow a Venus flytrap to snap its jaws, or a dry, windswept grain of pollen to swell when it reaches moisture, now lend themselves to an inventive study of geometric expansion and contraction. The research was led by Katia Bertoldi, assistant professor in applied mechanics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Pedro Reis, Edgerton Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. The findings appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The buckliball not only opens avenues for the design of foldable structures over a wide range of length scales, but may also be used as a...