Architected anti-loosening screw with mass-efficient fixturing capabilities

• Architected anti-loosening screw used to achieve advanced fixturing capabilities. • Screw is resistant to loosening in high vibration scenarios due to self-anchoring. • Screw uses mass efficiently to increase the force required to pull it out. • Screw does not damage surrounding material when it is pulled out. • Applications: lightweight high-vibration screws for aircraft or orthopedic screws. As additive manufacturing technologies progress toward enabling architected structures with increasingly finer features using practical materials, the design of ubiquitous fasteners like screws can be reimagined to use their mass more efficiently for improving both anti-loosening performance and clamping strength. Here we introduce an architected screw design that passively anchors itself to achieve these objectives while surviving large pull-out displacements and while avoiding damage to the surrounding material when the screw is forcefully removed. The screw’s advanced fixturing capabilities were optimized using finite element analysis and validated experimentally by comparison with a homogeneous counterpart, which was additively fabricated using the same material and with an identical external geometry. Potential applications of the architected screw include lightweight fasteners for aircraft subjected to high vibrations and orthopedic screws (e.g., pedicle screws) that securely anchor to bone without causing damage.