New LEGO-like Material Opens Door to New World of Lightweight Manufacturing

In response to the question "Can you 3D print an airplane?" two researchers have developed a new lightweight structure whose X-shaped, interlocking pieces are 10 times stiffer for a given weight than existing ultralight materials.

Current manufacturing practices favor constructing each part of a product from as few pieces as possible, thereby cutting down on joints where cracks and structural failures are most liable to occur.

However, this approach has shortcomings of its own, mainly that when such a large piece of equipment fails -- whether it be an airplane wing or a car's body -- it does so abruptly and on a large scale.

In the new structural technique pioneered by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, the individual building blocks are all identical and tend to fail incrementally. As a result, not only are the structures they form less likely to break, but, in the case that they do, they are far easier to repair.

Comparing it to chainmail or LEGO-like toys, co-author Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, called it "a massively redundant system."

Moreover, the researchers show in their study published in the journal Science that by combining different part types, the new structure is able to bend in response to changing loads, so that rather than requiring joints to flex and bend, an entire arm of a robot or wing of an airplane could change shape.

In terms of everyday use, the researchers explain that the invention could open the door to far lighter cars as well as a sharp decline the cost of construction and assembly -- all the while offering a greater range of design.

Ultimately, as co-author Kenneth Cheung put it, the new system could have serious implications in regards to the construction of "anything you need to move, or put in the air or space."