kinetiX is a transformable material featuring a design that resembles a cellular structure. It consists of rigid plates or rods and elastic hinges. These modular elements can be combined in a wide variety of ways and assembled into multifarious forms.
This project describes a group of auxetic-inspired material structures that can transform into various shapes upon compression. While the majority of the studies of auxetic materials focus on their mechanical properties and topological variations, our work proposes a parametric design approach that gives auxetic structures the ability to deform beyond shrinking or expanding. To do so, we see the auxetic structure as a parametric four-bar linkage. We developed four cellular-based material structure units composed of rigid plates and elastic/rotary hinges. Different compositions of these units lead to a variety of tunable shape-changing possibilities, such as uniform scaling, shearing, bending and rotating. By tessellating those transformations together, we can create various higher level transformations for design. The simulation is validated by the 3D printed structures.
We hope this work will inspire research in metamaterials design, shape-changing materials, and transformable architecture.