Metamaterials in Space: Designing the Next Generation of Large Precision Structures
Traditional space structures are designed as deployable systems: manufactured and tested on Earth, folded to fit within launch vehicles, and then deployed in orbit. While reliable, this paradigm imposes severe constraints on mass efficiency and scalability, as designs must survive extreme launch loads. The emerging vision of in-space manufacturing and assembly creates opportunities for radically new large-scale architectures where performance, not launch survivability, drives design. In this seminar, I will present recent advances toward the design of in-space manufacturable and modularly assembled spacecraft structures, focusing on two case studies: a 1 MW solar array and a 100 m radio frequency antenna. Both systems integrate metamaterial concepts including dissipative viscoelastic elements, crumpled plate architectures, and optimized truss networks to simultaneously achieve high stiffness, enhanced damping, and robustness with minimal mass cost. For the solar array, we demonstrate numerically and experimentally that crumpled thin plates supported by viscoelastic metamaterial trusses can achieve a ten-fold improvement in mass efficiency compared to reference arrays, while maintaining sub-meter precision. For the RF antenna, we introduce a form-finding approach to design a pre-stressed netband supported by optimized truss spokes that maintains millimeter-level precision under maneuvering loads. Both designs are validated through numerical modeling, experimental modal analysis, and scaled laboratory prototypes. These results highlight a new design paradigm in which metamaterials and in-space manufacturing converge to enable large, precise, and mass-efficient structures beyond the limits of deployable technologies. The developed approaches open pathways for next-generation antennas, solar arrays, and optical systems critical to science, defense, and space exploration.
Bio: Serife Tol is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her Ph.D. (2017) from Georgia Institute of Technology and her M.S. (2012) and B.S. (2009) degrees from Middle East Technical University (METU, Ankara, Turkey), all in mechanical engineering. She worked as a test and analysis engineer in the Defense Systems Technologies Business Sector at ASELSAN (Turkey, Ankara) between 2009 and 2012. Tol’s research interests include metamaterials, metasurfaces, phononic crystals, smart materials, electromechanical systems, vibrations, and wave propagation. Her research program has been funded by NSF, DARPA, ONR, DoE, and NASA. She is also the recipient of the John F. Ullrich Education Excellence Award (2023) and ASME C.D. Mote Jr. Early Career Award (2024).