S. Dhulipala; C.M. Portela
arXiv (2025) 2505.21509
Additively manufactured (AM) architected materials have enabled unprecedented control over
mechanical properties of engineered materials. While lattice architectures have played a key role
in these advances, they suffer from stress concentrations at sharp joints and bending-dominated
behavior at high relative densities, limiting their mechanical efficiency. Additionally, high-
resolution AM techniques often result in low-throughput or costly fabrication, restricting manu-
facturing scalability of these materials. Aperiodic spinodal architected materials offer a promis-
ing alternative by leveraging low-curvature architectures that can be fabricated through tech-
niques beyond AM. Enabled by phase separation processes, these architectures exhibit tunable
mechanical properties and enhanced defect tolerance by tailoring their curvature distributions.
However, the relation between curvature and their anisotropic mechanical behavior remains
poorly understood. In this work, we develop a theoretical framework to quantify the role of
curvature in governing the anisotropic stiffness and strength of shell-based spinodal architected
materials. We introduce geometric metrics that predict the distribution of stretching and bend-
ing energies under different loading conditions, bridging the gap between curvature in doubly
curved shell-based morphologies and their mechanical anisotropy. We validate our framework
through finite element simulations and microscale experiments, demonstrating its utility in de-
signing mechanically robust spinodal architectures. This study provides fundamental insights
into curvature-driven mechanics, guiding the optimization of next-generation architected mate-
rials for engineering applications.