The present study focuses on the mechanical chirality in plate-type topologically interlocked material systems. Topologically interlocked material (TIM) systems are a class of dense architectured materials for which the mechanical response emerges from the elastic behavior of the building blocks and the contact-frictions interactions between the blocks. The resulting mechanical behavior is strongly non-linear due to the stability-instability characteristics of the internal load transfer pattern. Two tessellations are considered (square and hexagonal) and patches from each are used as templates. While individual building blocks are achiral, chirality emerges from the assembly pattern. The measure of is introduced to identify the geometric chirality of TIM systems. TIM systems identified as geometrically chiral are demonstrated to possess mechanical chiral response with a force-torque coupling under transverse mechanical loading of the TIM plate. The chiral length is found to be constant during the elastic response, yet size-dependent. During nonlinear deformation, the chiral length scale increases significantly and again exhibits a strong size dependence. The principle of dissection is introduced to transform non-chiral TIM systems into chiral ones. In the linear deformation regime, the framework of chiral elasticity is shown to be applicable. In the non-linear deformation regime, chirality is found to strongly affect the mechanical behavior more significantly than in the linear regime. Experiments on selected TIM systems validate key findings of the main computational study with the finite element method.

中文翻译：

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拓扑互锁材料系统中的手性

目前的研究重点是板型拓扑互锁材料系统中的机械手性。拓扑互锁材料（TIM）系统是一类致密结构材料，其机械响应来自构件的弹性行为和构件之间的接触摩擦相互作用。由于内部负载传递模式的稳定性-不稳定特性，所产生的机械行为是强烈非线性的。考虑两个镶嵌图案（正方形和六边形），并将每个镶嵌图案用作模板。虽然各个构建块是非手性的，但手性是从组装模式中产生的。引入 的测量来识别 TIM 系统的几何手性。被确定为几何手性的 TIM 系统被证明在 TIM 板的横向机械载荷下具有力-扭矩耦合的机械手性响应。发现手性长度在弹性响应期间是恒定的，但与尺寸有关。在非线性变形过程中，手性长度尺度显着增加，并再次表现出强烈的尺寸依赖性。引入解剖原理将非手性TIM体系转化为手性体系。在线性变形状态下，手性弹性框架被证明是适用的。在非线性变形状态下，手性对机械行为的影响比在线性状态下更显着。在选定的 TIM 系统上进行的实验验证了使用有限元方法进行的主要计算研究的主要发现。