Weiyun Xu | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Impedance-Guided Programmable Transmission of Localized Deformation in Modular Soft Metamaterials

Soft metamaterials provide a promising platform for robotics, biomedical devices, and flexible electronics. The localized mechanical responses by nonuniform excitation are ubiquitous in soft materials, yet their controlled transmission across assemblies remains largely overlooked in metamaterial design, which critically constrains nontrivial functionalities with end-to-end and long-range deformation transmission. Here, we introduce an impedance-guided design framework that enables programmable transmission of localized deformation in modular soft metamaterials, achieving behaviors unattainable by intuitive design. By establishing a nonlinear model considering position-dependent interactions and integrating the concept of mechanical impedance within metamaterials, we regulate assembly-level transmission solely through unit-cell topology optimization. The resulting framework enables effective synthesis of module families, allowing both homogeneous and heterogeneous assemblies to be custom-built with markedly enhanced transmission characteristics. Leveraging the highly combinatorial and extensible design space, we physically realize diverse on-demand displacement manipulation architectures, including obstacle-bypassing modular soft-metamaterial assemblies, defect-tolerant soft gripping, and embodied signal processing. Beyond deformation programming, the reconfigurability and reassemblability of these soft modules can embed electric logic signals, enabling energy-efficient and low-latency information processing through compliant-switch-controlled mechanical LED displays and wearable finger-motion-sensing controllers. Our method provides fundamental insights into localized deformation transmission in modular soft metamaterials and establishes a scalable route toward embodied-intelligence material systems, particularly for soft-metamaterial-centric actuation, sensing, and collective computing.

cs.CE↗

arXiv2025

Efficient forward and inverse uncertainty quantification for dynamical systems based on dimension reduction and Kriging surrogate modeling in functional space

Surrogate models are extensively employed for forward and inverse uncertainty quantification in complex, computation-intensive engineering problems. Nonetheless, constructing high-accuracy surrogate models for complex dynamical systems with limited training samples continues to be a challenge, as capturing the variability in high-dimensional dynamical system responses with a small training set is inherently difficult. This study introduces an efficient Kriging modeling framework based on functional dimension reduction (KFDR) for conducting forward and inverse uncertainty quantification in dynamical systems. By treating the responses of dynamical systems as functions of time, the proposed KFDR method first projects these responses onto a functional space spanned by a set of predefined basis functions, which can deal with noisy data by adding a roughness regularization term. A few key latent functions are then identified by solving the functional eigenequation, mapping the time-variant responses into a low-dimensional latent functional space. Subsequently, Kriging surrogate models with noise terms are constructed in the latent space. With an inverse mapping established from the latent space to the original output space, the proposed approach enables accurate and efficient predictions for dynamical systems. Finally, the surrogate model derived from KFDR is directly utilized for efficient forward and inverse uncertainty quantification of the dynamical system. Through three numerical examples, the proposed method demonstrates its ability to construct highly accurate surrogate models and perform uncertainty quantification for dynamical systems accurately and efficiently.

math.DS↗