Zi Chen's research on the cover of Applied Physics Letters

An article titled “Shape formation of helical ribbons induced by material anisotropy” and co-authored by Branco Weiss Fellow Zi Chen appeared in the February issue of Applied Physics Letters.

Helices are ubiquitous building blocks in natural and engineered systems. It’s already known that helical ribbon morphology can result from anisotropic driving forces and geometric misorientation between the principal axes of the driving forces and the geometric axes. The research now published examines helical ribbon shapes induced by elastic modulus anisotropy. This is of much interest because most natural and engineered structures are made of composite materials with anisotropic mechanical properties. By building on a previously developed model using continuum elasticity and stationarity principles, the researchers were able to predict helical ribbon shapes induced by material anisotropy under both isotropic and anisotropic pre-stretching conditions. This work can promote programmable design and fabrication of curved structures and devices.

The article was even featured on the cover of the magazine.

Read the paper on the Applied Physics Letters website