6 - Experimental Methods in Pantographic Structures

Summary

Once a metamaterial has been conceived, designed and built, its expected properties must be experimentally verified, in order to validate the conceptual analysis leading to it and the construction process used to realize it. Using 3D printing technology is not always a trivial task, especially if the designed microstructures are complex and show large differences in their geometrical and mechanical properties, at lower scales. Moreover, once some specimens are built, some specific experimental apparatuses have to be designed that are able to manifest the specific desired exotic mechanical features which are the target of the whole research effort. Therefore it is not a simple task to prove that the pantographic microstructured metamaterials do really exhibit the behavior which is expected. The gathered evidence which shows the validity of the concept of pantographic metamaterial is carefully presented here.