Mechanostructures: Rational mechanical design, fabrication, performance evaluation, and industrial application of advanced structures

The rapid progress of advanced manufacturing, multidisciplinary integration and artificial intelligence has ushered in a new era of technological development in the design of lightweight, well-integrated, multifunctional, intelligent, flexible and biomimetic materials and structures. The traditional approach in structural research poses several intrinsic limitations on the practical performance of devices and instruments in harsh industrial environments, due to factors such as the disconnection between structural design and manufacturing, low efficiency in the manufacture of complex structures, reduced actual mechanical integrity and reliability of manufactured structures compared to the theoretical values obtained from structural design, insufficient level of multifunctional structural integration, and excessive economic cost. In addition, the advanced materials and structures incorporated in industrial equipment often need to withstand extreme service environments, and it is increasingly important to further integrate the design, manufacture, function, performance evaluation and industrial application of advanced structures, to provide the theoretical and technical bases for optimizing their fabrication. In view of the above, the authors propose a new research paradigm of “mechanostructures,” which aims to achieve target mechanical responses of structures, devices and equipment in extreme service environments by integrating their structural design, manufacturing and performance evaluation. By designing novel structures based on desired static and dynamic mechanical responses and considering the mechanical behavior throughout the whole deformation process, the new field of “mechanostructures” pursues an application-oriented structural design approach. As a typical example of mechanostructures, lightweight multifunctional lattice structures with high stiffness, strength, impact resistance, energy absorption capacity, shock wave attenuation and noise reduction show great potential for applications in aerospace, transportation, defense, biomedical, energy, machinery, equipment and other industrial fields. In this respect, the mechanical design of lattice metastructures inspired by polycrystalline microstructures is presented, starting with a discussion on typical mechanical properties and multifunctional performance conflicts, and demonstrating the scientific merits of “mechanostructures” based on the innovative structural design, manipulation of the multifunctional mechanical properties, and elaboration of the underlying physical mechanisms.