Twisters: An analogy of bilayers for twisting

Benders, such as bilayers, are well-known shape-changing structures which bend upon activation by a stimulus, such as temperature. The objective of this contribution is to propose new shape-changing rod-like structures, referred to as twisters, which twist upon activation. A simple biomimetic design principle based on symmetry considerations is proposed. FEM simulations show that the proposed design does feature a twisting instability in …