Design of pseudo-mechanisms and multistable units for mechanical metamaterials

Mechanism—collections of rigid elements coupled by perfect hinges which exhibit a zero-energy motion—motivate the design of a variety of mechanical metamaterials. We enlarge this design space by considering {}, collections of elastically coupled elements that exhibit motions with very low energy costs. We show that their geometric design generally is distinct from those of true mechanisms, thus opening up a large and virtually unexplored design space. We further extend this space by designing building blocks with bistable and tristable energy landscapes, realize these by 3D printing, and show how these form unit cells for multistable metamaterials.