New research to develop a 3D-printed, energy-absorbing material could lead to, among other things, safer football helmets, and Purdue University is teaming with General Motors on the project.
The project shows the use of bi-stable mechanisms can dissipate a lot of energy into a material when force is applied to it.
Pablo Zavattieri, an associate professor at Purdue University and a lead researcher on the collaboration between the school and General Motors says a good way to visualize it is to think about a hair clip you snap back and forth.
"What we are proposing here is a very simple mechanism that actually drives all of this energy, the energy that comes from impact, so it drives all that energy into a bi-stable mechanism that you actually have in each unit cell of this cellular material," Zavattieri says.
Zavattieri says the project is in a "basic science" stage, so researchers are looking at specific applications it could be used for like helmets and engineering for buildings. But he says it could potentially lead to a range of uses from vehicle protection to aerospace structures.
He says he expects that four or five years from now, it could be a commercial product.