Trusses beyond trusses: intertwined and straw-based metamaterials and beyond

Periodic beam-based metamaterials have been extensively explored for their tunable stiffness, strength, and wave dispersion. Recent efforts extend this concept by maintaining the lattice topology but replacing beams by more complex structural members-such as straws or intertwined fibers. These mechanical metamaterials leverage underexplored mechanisms from the small-scale design such as contact, friction, and sliding, or multistability and reversible reconfigurability. This provides opportunities for untapped design spaces and performance exploration.