Butterfly wing-inspired printed metamaterial absorbs impacts, radar and

Engineers report a materials breakthrough aimed at solving three longstanding protection problems for vehicles and aircraft: crash safety weight, radar-visibility coatings, and noise-reducing foams. A team led by Prof. Longqiu Li at Harbin Institute of Technology describes in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing a single, printed metamaterial just 24 millimeters thick that combines mechanical, electromagnetic and acoustic functions without separate layers or adhesive bonding. The design uses a hierarchical lattice inspired by butterfly and moth wing architectures. In testing, its deformation mode absorbed 21.9 times more impact energy than an ordinary honeycomb, helped by a gyroid lattice that spreads stress more evenly and cushions compression.