Drastic tailorable thermal expansion chiral planar and cylindrical shell structures explored with finite element simulation

Design of materials and structures with quite low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), even zero or negative CTE is important for industrial application where drastic temperature changes are encountered. In this paper, making use of the bending of bi-material beam and the unique deformation mechanism of chiral lattice structures, five sets of chiral lattice composite structures with tailorable CTEs are proposed, where synergic effects of rigid node rotation and bi-material ligament bending deformation are responsible for giant range of structural deformation due to temperature change, from positive CTE to negative CTE through adjusting the geometrical parameters of composite bi-material chiral unit cell, and the relationship between unit cell geometric parameters and CTEs of the structure are studied systematically through finite element analysis. Finally, design of bi-material cylindrical shells consisting of anti-tetra chiral unit cells are proposed, and its axial CTEs with different number of the unit cells along the circumferential are studied systematically, demonstrating the robust range of CTEs can be generated through adjusting the geometrical parameters of chiral bi-material unit cells. The proposed chiral structures demonstrated promising application potentials in industrial fields, such as: aerospace and microelectronics, where extremely high structural accuracy is required during harsh working temperature environment.