Contact-free optical metrology for energy-efficient manufacturing of mechanical metamaterials

Mechanical metamaterials are a class of advanced materials that use repeated three-dimensional geometric patterns to endow common materials with new, enhanced, and superior material properties. The “meta” in “metamaterials” refers to the geometric pattern, while the “material” can be a metal, polymer, ceramic, etc. Our expertise focuses on the design and production of mechanical metamaterials for lightweight high-strength sandwich panels that outperform comparable foam and honeycomb materials. The success of this advanced materials technology comes from our ability to engineer how physical properties scale with the “effective density” by modifying the underlying geometric pattern, allowing for low-density high-strength composite panel structures. This SBIR Phase I proposal seeks to determine the feasibility of using contact-free optical metrology to produce metamaterial-enhanced panels fabricated by thermoforming recycled PETG plastic sheets efficiently at scale. If successful, we will be able to reduce power consumption during fabrication by optimizing the heating, forming, and cooling stages with non-destructive in-line photoelastic imaging of complex thermomechanical stress gradients. In follow-on Phase II work, we anticipate scaling up and automating the Phase I results to allow us to focus on ensuring QA/QC while efficiently serving customers through a geographically distributed domestic contract manufacturing supply chain.