In a word, rigidity. Machine tools do a seemingly magical thing. They remove quantities of steel (or other materials medieval humans would have killed for) with a slightly tougher piece of steel.

These materials have three antagonist — seemingly counteractive — properties: floppiness, rigidity and multistability. This means that a user can re-program, on demand, their properties to be ...

The material also has a specific rigidity level that is higher than that of 30% short glass fiber-reinforced PP resin, with a large loss coefficient at the same time. The properties of high specific ...