Golden‐Ratio–Guided Aperiodic Architected Metamaterials with Simultaneously Enhanced Strength and Toughness
Abstract Architected lattice metamaterials offer tunable, exceptional mechanical performance through precisely engineered microarchitectures, yet an intrinsic trade‐off between strength and toughness remains a fundamental design challenge. Here, a class of aperiodic architected metamaterials guided by the golden ratio ‐ a geometric principle emblematic of natural balance and structural harmony—is introduced to overcome this limitation. The concept is validated via additive manufacturing of conventional periodic, hierarchical periodic, and golden‐ratio‐guided aperiodic lattices, along with their interpenetrating phase composite (IPC) counterparts. The aperiodic architectures exhibit significantly enhanced damage tolerance under monotonic loading, with increases of 84.24% and 42.45% in ultimate load, and 277.43% and 128.13% in initial fracture energy, for the lattice and IPC metamaterials, respectively. Under cyclic loading, only the aperiodic IPC withstands five tensile cycles at 350 N before incurring damage, whereas all other architectures fail during the initial cycle. These improvements stem from the unification of local geometric heterogeneity and global order in the golden‐ratio‐guided aperiodic architecture, which alleviates stress concentrations and promotes spatial delocalization of damage‐tolerence regions. As a result, crack paths become more tortuous and adaptive, enhancing energy dissipation and resistance to fracture. These findings establish golden‐ratio‐guided aperiodicity as a robust design paradigm for next‐generation damage‐tolerant metamaterials.
Authors
- Chee Kai Chua (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4536-6199)
- Junjie Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5137-8615)
- Ke Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0863-0635)
- Jia An (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5630-5266)
- Zhonggang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-2762)
- Kai Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1633-7188)
- Xinxin Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3564-6816)
- Xinwei Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1702-8670)
- Zhendong Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6363-3655)
- Ruochao Zhao
Institutions
- Central South University (CN)
- Singapore University of Technology and Design (SG)
- National University of Singapore (SG)
- Wuhan University of Technology (CN)
- Wuhan University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Hubei University of Technology (CN)
- Newcastle University (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Functional Materials
- Published
- 2025-11-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202516315
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Cellular and Composite Structures
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.71
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province