Inducing auxetic response in nonwoven fabrics
Can you think of anything that expands upon stretching? Almost everything we use and come across in our daily lives, like metals, plastics and ceramics, contract upon stretch. Things that expand though, are called auxetic. This behavior is extremely rare in naturally occurring materials and has only gained substantial recognition and synthesis efforts in the past two to three decades. That should be termed as a 'recent' development, given the very fundamental nature of the properties it effects. Commonly used materials are often given an auxetic property by engineering novel design elements in their structure. In my PhD work, I identified some commonly used and inexpensive nonwovens that can be made auxetic. Specific heat and compression treatments produced chevron shaped structures that produced an auxetic response in these nonwovens. The chevron design and the processing method have a potential to be used by future scientist in other systems. Such auxetic nonwovens can be used for ballistic protection, smart filtration, and as tissue engineering scaffolds, to begin with. Read my first scientific research paper on this topic here.
Last updated on June 01, 2023
This work was done in full or part at Georgia Institute of Technology.