Designing orthotropic materials for negative or zero compressibility

There has been considerable interest in materials exhibiting negative or zero compressibility. Such materials are desirable for various applications. A number of models or mechanisms have been proposed to characterize the unusual phenomena of negative linear compressibility (NLC) and negative area compressibility (NAC) in natural or synthetic systems. In this paper we propose a general design technique for finding metamaterials with negative or zero compressibility by using a topology optimization approach. Based on the bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method, we establish a systematic computational procedure and present a series of designs of orthotropic materials with various magnitudes of negative compressibility, or with zero compressibility, in one or two directions. A physical prototype of one of such metamaterials is fabricated using a 3D printer and tested in the laboratory under either unidirectional loading or triaxial compression. The experimental results compare well with the numerical predictions. This research has demonstrated the feasibility of designing and fabricating metamaterials with negative or zero compressibility and paved the way towards their practical applications.