A mollusk and shrimp are two unlikely marine animals that are playing a very important role in engineering. The bodies of both animals illustrate how natural features, like the structures of their bones and shells, can be borrowed to enhance the performance of engineered structures and materials, like bridges and airplanes. 

There is much interest in the possible use of origami-inspired metamaterials for engineering applications, due to their precisely architected structures that exhibit unconventional behavior. In practice, however, these structures are unlikely to exist without defects and imperfections.

The simplicity and elegance of origami, an ancient Japanese art form, has motivated researchers to explore its application in the world of materials. New research from an interdisciplinary team, including Northwestern University’s Horacio Espinosa and Sridhar Krishnaswamy and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Glaucio Paulino, aims to advance the creation and understanding of such folded structures for applications ranging from soft robotics to medical devices to energy harvesters.

Most of us take for granted the roads and bridges we travel every day. What we don’t know is that almost four in 10 bridges are 50 years or older. Many of the nation’s bridges are approaching the end of their design life, and 614,387 bridges in the U.S. earned a grade of C+ on the American Society for Civil Engineering’s 2017 Infrastructure Report Card.