A tightly compressed bundle of office staples can behave in a surprising way. Even though it is made of many separate pieces, the tangled mass can be difficult to pull apart and can act almost like a single solid object.
Yet that same bundle can quickly come undone. With the right vibration or movement, the staples can separate and return to a loose collection of individual pieces.
Researchers at the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder believe this unusual combination of strength and reversibility could help inspire a new generation of engineered materials. By designing particles that interlock in a similar way to staples, they hope to create materials that are strong, adaptable, and potentially recyclable.
"We've been playing around with the idea of building blocks and geometry for many years, but we started looking at interlocking, entangled particles only recently," said Professor Francois Barthelat, the leader of the Laboratory for Advanced Materials & Bioinspiration. "We are excited about the combination of properties we can get out of these systems and we believe this technology has the potential to go in many directions."
The findings were recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
