'Buckliball' means collapsible structures with no moving parts

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

Buckling buildings are normally bad news, but a new a 3D shape dubbed the "buckliball", created by researchers at MIT and Harvard University, could allow architects to create structures with collapsible ceilings or walls without the need for moving parts.

The buckliball is a 3D-printed hollow rubber sphere whose surface is covered with 24 evenly spaced dimples. The name comes from the shape's resemblance to the spherical carbon molecules, known as buckyballs.Sucking out the air from the buckliball causes the spaces between the dimples to collapse, buckling under an even load and closing the dimples to create a 26-sided shape - called a rhombicuboctahedron - which is about half the size of the original sphere.

Reinflating the buckliball returns it to its original shape, opening up a wide range of applications. The researchers say buckliballs could be used to design buildings that collapse and reform, create microscopic drug-delivery capsules or even find their way into a new kind of Transformer toy. Inspiration for the buckliballs themselves actually came from a toy known as the Hoberman Twist-O, which undergoes similar deformations.

The team have calculated that the dimples can be arranged in five different ways across a sphere and still share the buckliball's collapsing properties. And it turns out that viruses already use a similar 60-sided design to inject DNA into a host by opening or closing in reaction to the surrounding chemical environment. Buckliballs could potentially mimic this behaviour, triggering a collapse in response to electrical, thermal or chemical changes.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences doi: 10.1073/pnas.1115674109

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1dd69a5f/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C0A30Cbuckliball0Emeans0Ecollapsible0Es0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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