A Material Both Drives Motion and Dampens Impact

A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is creating a material that can both absorb and release energy.

“Because the phase shift is predictable and repeatable, we can engineer the metamaterial to do exactly what we want it to do: either absorbing the energy from a large impact, or releasing great quantities of energy for explosive movement,” said Xudong Liang , the paper’s lead author, currently a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen (HITSZ), China.