Mechanical engineering articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    High-pressure diamond anvil cell experiments reveal that compression strengthening of nanocrystalline nickel increases as its grain sizes decrease to 3 nanometres, owing to dislocation hardening and suppression of grain boundary plasticity.

    • Xiaoling Zhou
    • , Zongqiang Feng
    •  & Bin Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ionization cooling, a technique that delivers high-brightness muon beams for the study of phenomena at energy scales beyond those of the Large Hadron Collider, is demonstrated by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment.

    • M. Bogomilov
    • , R. Tsenov
    •  & C. Heidt

  • Article |

    Conventionally, heat transfer occurs by conduction, convection or radiation, but has also been theoretically predicted to occur through quantum fluctuations across a vacuum; this prediction has now been confirmed experimentally.

    • King Yan Fong
    • , Hao-Kun Li
    •  & Xiang Zhang

  • Article |

    A micromachine less than 100 micrometres across, made of arrays of nanomagnets on hinged panels, is encoded with multiple shape transformations  and actuated with a magnetic field.

    • Jizhai Cui
    • , Tian-Yun Huang
    •  & Laura J. Heyderman

  • Article |

    Heavier-than-air insect-scale aerial robots powered by soft artificial muscles can hover and also recover from in-flight collisions, illustrating the potential for developing next-generation agile soft robots.

    • Yufeng Chen
    • , Huichan Zhao
    •  & Robert J. Wood

  • Article |

    Architected silicon-based lattices are reported that reversibly transform their structure on electrochemical lithiation and delithiation, through cooperatively coupled buckling instabilities that are sensitive to random  and  pre-designed defects.

    • Xiaoxing Xia
    • , Arman Afshar
    •  & Julia R. Greer

  • Letter |

    A stretchable polymer pump that uses electric fields to accelerate ions in dielectric liquids can generate flow even when bent into different conformations, offering applications in soft robotics.

    • Vito Cacucciolo
    • , Jun Shintake
    •  & Herbert Shea

  • Letter |

    The thermal conductance of single-molecule junctions is measured using picowatt-resolution calorimetric scanning probes and is found to be nearly independent of the length of the alkanedithiol molecules studied.

    • Longji Cui
    • , Sunghoon Hur
    •  & Edgar Meyhofer

  • Article |

    An energy-dense hydraulic fluid is used to construct a synthetic circulatory system in a lionfish-like soft robot, enabling untethered movement for up to 36 hours.

    • Cameron A. Aubin
    • , Snehashis Choudhury
    •  & Robert F. Shepherd

  • Letter |

    Evidence from hippocampal place cells shows that path-integration gain, previously thought to be a constant factor in the computation of location, is flexible and can be rapidly fine-tuned.

    • Ravikrishnan P. Jayakumar
    • , Manu S. Madhav
    •  & James J. Knierim

  • Article |

    Inspired by the enhanced mechanical strength of microstructured metals, damage-tolerant architected materials are developed in which the internal structure is granular, with different regions having different lattice orientations.

    • Minh-Son Pham
    • , Chen Liu
    •  & Jedsada Lertthanasarn

  • Letter |

    Quantitative explorations using biomechanics and robotics of the gait of Orobates, a stem amniote, indicate that the development of relatively erect, power-saving and balanced locomotion preceded the diversification of crown amniotes

    • John A. Nyakatura
    • , Kamilo Melo
    •  & Auke J. Ijspeert

  • Letter |

    A scheme for implementing multi-step topological reorganization of a mechanical metamaterial is demonstrated, which proceeds autonomously, without the need for external control.

    • Corentin Coulais
    • , Alberico Sabbadini
    •  & Martin van Hecke

  • Letter |

    A process is described for the transformation of bulk wood into a low-cost, strong, tough, lightweight structural material, by the partial removal of lignin and hemicellulose followed by hot-pressing to densify the natural wood.

    • Jianwei Song
    • , Chaoji Chen
    •  & Liangbing Hu

  • Letter |

    Giga-voxel-resolution computational morphogenesis is used to optimize the internal structure of a full-scale aeroplane wing, yielding light-weight designs with more similarities to animal bone structures than to current aeroplane wing designs.

    • Niels Aage
    • , Erik Andreassen
    •  & Ole Sigmund

  • Letter |

    Nanometre-scale columnar structures in tooth enamel inspire novel nanocomposites containing layers of vertically aligned nanowires, produced by layer-by-layer fabrication and combining high values of both storage modulus and energy dissipation.

    • Bongjun Yeom
    • , Trisha Sain
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • Letter |

    Suitably engineered mechanical metamaterials show static non-reciprocity—that is, the transmission of motion from one side to the other depends on the direction of that motion.

    • Corentin Coulais
    • , Dimitrios Sounas
    •  & Andrea Alù

  • Article |

    A robust and scale-independent strategy for the design of reconfigurable architected materials (in which properties are adjusted by altering structure rather than composition) is described, based on space-filling assemblies of polyhedra.

    • Johannes T. B. Overvelde
    • , James C. Weaver
    •  & Katia Bertoldi

  • Letter |

    Holograms for sound waves, encoded in a 3D printed plate, are used to shape sound fields that can be used for the contactless manipulation of objects.

    • Kai Melde
    • , Andrew G. Mark
    •  & Peer Fischer

  • Letter |

    Moving mechanical interfaces need to be lubricated to ensure long life and easy slippage; here, a new type of coating is described—comprising nitrides of either molybdenum or vanadium, together with a copper or nickel catalyst—that generates protective tribofilms from lubricating oils.

    • Ali Erdemir
    • , Giovanni Ramirez
    •  & Subramanian K. R. S. Sankaranarayanan

  • Letter |

    Lattices of cubic building blocks that deform anisotropically and that are designed to fit together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle are 3D printed to create aperiodic, frustration-free, mechanical metamaterials; these metamaterials act as programmable shape-shifters and are able to perform pattern analysis.

    • Corentin Coulais
    • , Eial Teomy
    •  & Martin van Hecke

  • Letter |

    Nanoscale radiative heat transfer between both dielectric and metal surfaces separated by gaps as small as two nanometres is characterized by large gap-dependent heat transfer enhancements that are accurately modelled by the theoretical framework of fluctuational electrodynamics and has important implications for technological design.

    • Kyeongtae Kim
    • , Bai Song
    •  & Pramod Reddy

  • Article |

    Practical applications of magnesium as a lightweight structural metal are limited by its high work hardening, low ductility and fracture at very low strains; now molecular dynamics simulations reveal the origins of these problems and offer a route to design magnesium alloys with improved mechanical properties.

    • Zhaoxuan Wu
    •  & W. A. Curtin

  • Letter |

    The transition between ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ friction in a model system is found to be quantitatively captured by the same theoretical framework as is used to describe brittle fracture, but deviations from this correspondence are observed as the rupture velocity approaches the speed at which sound waves propagate along the interface.

    • Ilya Svetlizky
    •  & Jay Fineberg

  • Letter |

    There are many uses for surfaces that can stay dry, self-clean or resist icing, and many applications benefit from minimizing the contact time between a surface and any drops that may come into contact with it; drops are now shown to bounce off faster when using a superhydrophobic surface with a morphology that redistributes the liquid mass so that the centre of the drop assists in the recoil.

    • James C. Bird
    • , Rajeev Dhiman
    •  & Kripa K. Varanasi

  • Letter |

    The parameters critical in determining the behaviour of a fibrous medium wetted with a single liquid drop are identified as fibre flexibility, fibre geometry and drop volume.

    • C. Duprat
    • , S. Protière
    •  & H. A. Stone

  • Books & Arts |

    A proposed reinvention for urban motoring based on ultra-small electric vehicles does not address the bigger environmental or social challenges, finds Daniel Sperling.

    • Daniel Sperling

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