Abstract Postbuckling structural instabilities has been shown to have useful mechanical characteristics such as well deformation resistance and recovery. However, the difficulties in control and programmability, due to the complex interconnected sensitivities to geometric and material properties, severely hinder the phenomenon use in multifunctional structural applications. In this paper, we propose a concept of nonuniform beam assembly to increase the the controllability of the postbuckling response. Bilaterally constrained, nonuniform beams are theoretically investigated to obtain the buckling instability, and the predictions are compared with the experimental and numerical results with satisfactory agreements. Parametric studies are carried out to demonstrate the tunability of the reported beam assembly with respect to the geometric properties and material parameters (i.e., Young's modulus) of the nonuniform beams. Finally, the use of the proposed beam assembly method is investigated for novel applications as mechanical triggers and deformation detectors. This study demonstrates an exciting approach to tune the mechanical characteristics of engineered assembly structures for novel applications, such as material embedded mechanical sensing.

中文翻译：

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双壁非均匀梁的可编程组装：概念、建模和性能

摘要 后屈曲结构不稳定性已被证明具有有用的力学特性，如抗变形能力和恢复能力。然而，由于对几何和材料特性的复杂互连敏感性，控制和可编程性方面的困难严重阻碍了该现象在多功能结构应用中的使用。在本文中，我们提出了非均匀梁组件的概念，以增加后屈曲响应的可控性。理论上研究了双边约束的非均匀梁以获得屈曲不稳定性，并将预测与实验和数值结果进行比较，并获得令人满意的协议。进行参数研究以证明所报告的梁组件相对于非均匀梁的几何特性和材料参数（即杨氏模量）的可调性。最后，研究了所提出的梁组装方法在机械触发器和变形检测器等新应用中的使用。这项研究展示了一种令人兴奋的方法，可以为新应用调整工程装配结构的机械特性，例如材料嵌入的机械传感。