Wearable Mechanical Textile Metamaterials

Textiles are ubiquitous in our daily lives and appear everywhere from apparel to wearable robots. On one hand, stretchable knits are used in clothing for comfort and their ability to conform to our body. On the other hand, stiff woven textiles are utilized in functional garments to direct forces and support loads (e.g. backpack straps). Here, we combine a stretchable knit and a stiff woven to realize textile metamaterials that are comfortable but capable of directing forces to target locations. We use inverse design tools to identify spatially varying architectures that can manipulate forces across the fabric, while leaving desired areas undeformed. Furthermore, we show that our metamaterials can be engineered to support target deformation modes such as dimples that can be exploited to realize a new generation of wearable devices.