The design of disordered three-dimensional auxetic networks*

Auxetic materials are characterized by a negative Poisson’s ratio. They have attracted a lot of attention from both the scientific and engineering communities because of a variety of potential applications, such as impact mitigation, indentation resistance and biocompatibility. The design of auxetic materials is usually realized in lattice-based periodic structures in an Edisonian way. Disordered networks have the potential for the design of tunable isotropic auxetic metamaterials. However, the design of disordered three-dimensional auxetic networks has been challenging due to lack of a universal design principle. Here we propose computational strategies for the systematic design of disordered three-dimensional auxetic networks. Our designs are validated by experimental measurement of 3D-printed networks. This work builds a powerful computational framework to manipulate the auxetic properties.