The visual side of human culture is full of symbols that carry historical significance. They transmit language and emotion and constitute a record of our evolution. More recently, engineers have drawn inspiration from these cultural forms because their geometries may hold untapped potential for robust materials. Take the ancient art of origami, a culturally rich recreational practice that has served as the basis for astonishingly durable designs, leading to advances in aerospace, biomedical implants, and robotics.
Now, researchers at the University of Edinburgh tested 3D printed materials made from different Chinese characters to determine their strength, density and stiffness. As described in their article, published in the Journal of Applied Physicsone character performed particularly well, suggesting potential for a wide range of engineering applications.
Chinese characters (top), unit cell designs (middle), and 3D printed metamaterials (bottom).
(Image credit: Chloé Doey Leung and Parvez Alam)
What makes Chinese characters so interesting to engineers?
In search of new and sustainable designs, engineers are increasingly turning to models rooted in culture. Beyond the success of applying origami principles to modern industrial design, the complex geometric symmetry found in Islamic tile patterns has also inspired design software and structural engineering.
Now, scientists hope to build on this momentum by studying the durability of Chinese characters as structural patterns, which could potentially expand their use beyond written language.
“Certain Chinese characters have strong, distinctive geometries, and these are shapes that appear to be able to exhibit unique mechanical properties and behaviors,” study co-author Parvez Alam of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering said in a press release.
Chinese characters differ from the Latin alphabet in that they are often made up of curves, traverses, and graduated strokes that fill square shapes, shapes theoretically ideal for creating repeating functional units.
“These are architectural qualities that we see applied to metamaterials in general,” Alam said. “And one question that came to mind was whether these ancient characters could also serve as unconventional metamaterial architectures with specialized properties and behaviors.”
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Some 3D printed Chinese characters work better than others
Metamaterials are materials defined more by their patterned structure than by their composition. To test whether Chinese characters could be used in functional designs, the researchers selected four simple characters, created rows of repeating units for each, 3D printed them, and mechanically tested their performance.
The first character, 人, looks like an upside-down “V” and means “person.” The next one, 大, adds a horizontal stroke and translates to “big”. The “sky” character, 天, adds another horizontal stroke at the top, while the final character, 夫, meaning “husband”, differs from “sky” by a small protruding stroke above the top line.
Endurance testing, including compression under heavy loads, showed that some characters performed better than others from a metamaterials perspective. The “person” character failed first, probably due to its unsupported curvature. On the other hand, characters with horizontal lines distributed the load more effectively, thus aligning with the principles established in statics on the importance of sleepers. Overall, the researchers found that the character “sky” (天) had the most favorable mechanical properties.
Connecting engineering and history
The researchers see strong potential in their findings, not only for metamaterials, but also for making engineering more interdisciplinary and accessible. They suggest that symbol-based designs can help connect engineering, materials science and history.
According to Alam, they only scratched the surface. There are thousands of Chinese characters to explore, not to mention other rich writing systems such as Bengali, Arabic, and broader calligraphic traditions.
“The usefulness of symbols, while having value in engineering design, should also generate another type of learning interest,” Alam added. “I hope we can encourage more interdisciplinary interactions through this. STEM is fun, but so is everything else.”
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