Can we design structural materials with switchable properties?

Current engineering materials are designed to exhibit superior mechanical properties by carefully balancing their chemical composition and microstructure. However, once the material is produced, the material properties and behavior tend to remain same under the certain boundary conditions.

The aim of the project is to find possible strategies being able to externally switch the material properties. In the first step, model materials are tested numerically using finite element models in order to prove the concept and estimate for the magnitude of the applied effects.