Mr James Grima-Cornish, a University of Malta MSc in Metamaterials graduate, has won the 2020 “Award for Technological Innovation” IP national award for his project on Multi-Direction Auxetic Expanding Systems.
Auxetics are unconventional materials which get wider rather than thinner when stretched. This property is known to be beneficial in a number of scenarios.
Grima-Cornish and co-workers from the Metamaterials Unit have discovered a novel mechanism which transforms two-dimensional structures to three-dimensional auxetics via what was termed by Grima-Cornish as a “triangular elongation mechanism”.
This work, supervised by auxetics expert Dr Daphne Attard, has been published in the open-access peer-reviewed high-impact factor journal Materials (MDPI) and has already been cited by various international scientists working in the field.
Mr Grima-Cornish aspires to take the project forward through additional simulations, including ones on modified versions of the structure that has already been proposed. These simulations could be carried out through a variety of techniques ranging from mathematical modelling of idealised versions of the structures to more realistic simulations performed using Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
Once more results are in hand, the work will be presented to a wider international audience so as to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge generated by Maltese researchers.