Drawing on the prehistoric art of basketweaving, engineers at the University of Michigan found that woven materials return to their original shape after repeated cycles of strong compression, while continuous sheets of the same material permanently deform.
The modular platform to assemble woven corners presented in Physical Review Research could be used in any application where both resilience and stiffness are essential including soft robotics, car parts and architectural components.
After lead author Guowei Wayne Tu, a doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering at U-M, came across an article that dated woven baskets to around 7500 BCE, the researchers wondered if the ancient craft persists today for reasons beyond geometry and aesthetics.
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