A new patent on “Tailoring Thermoelastic Constants of Cellular and Lattice Materials with Pre-Stress for Lightweight Structures” has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as well as The International Patent System. In this study, a unique behavior of lattice-based materials has been discovered that leads to tailored stiffness and thermoelasticity of composites. By applying a pre-stress to a tube filled with a foamed lightweight core, stiffness, buckling resistance, thermal expansion coefficient, and temperature derivative of stiffness can be changed, which leads to the future production of smart advanced materials at low costs and high efficiency. This discovery immediately leads to the invention of a hierarchical lattice-based manufacturing process for strong lightweight structures with zero thermal expansions for terrestrial and space applications.
