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Bioinspired kirigami metasurfaces as assistive shoe grips

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 4, pages 778–786 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Falls and subsequent complications are major contributors to morbidity and mortality, especially in older adults. Here, by taking inspiration from claws and scales found in nature, we show that buckling kirigami structures applied to footwear outsoles generate higher friction forces in the forefoot and transversally to the direction of movement. We identified optimal kirigami designs capable of modulating friction for a range of surfaces, including ice, by evaluating the performance of the dynamic kirigami outsoles through numerical simulations and in vitro friction testing, as well as via human-gait force-plate measurements. We anticipate that lightweight kirigami metasurfaces applied to footwear outsoles could help mitigate the risk of slips and falls in a range of environments.

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Fig. 1: Kirigami shoe grip for the dynamic modulation of friction and prevention of slips and falls.
Fig. 2: Mechanical characterization of the kirigami shoe grips with different spike shapes.
Fig. 3: Friction enhancement of the kirigami shoe grips with various spike shapes and arrangements.
Fig. 4: Kirigami shoe grip-induced changes in utilized friction coefficient on an ice surface.

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Data availability

The main data supporting the results of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information. All of the data generated in this study, including the source data and the data used to make the figures, are available from figshare with the identifier https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12207992.

Code availability

The ABAQUS scripts used for the numerical analyses are available as Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Hua, M. Cruz, N. Inverardi, X. Lu and V. Soares for their help with the experimental studies; S. Cotreau, C. Haynes and A. Wentworth for help with manufacturing the experimental specimens; and R. Langer for fruitful discussions. This work was funded in part by a start-up grant from the Deparment of Mechanical Engineering, MIT to G.T. K.B. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant nos. DMR-1420570 (Materials Research Science and Engineering Center) and EFRI C3 SoRo 1830896. A.R. acknowledges support from Swiss National Science Foundation grant no. P300P2-164648.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sahab Babaee, Simo Pajovic, Ahmad Rafsanjani.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sahab Babaee, Simo Pajovic & Giovanni Traverso

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sahab Babaee, Simo Pajovic, Yichao Shi & Giovanni Traverso

  3. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Simo Pajovic & Yichao Shi

  4. Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ahmad Rafsanjani

  5. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Katia Bertoldi

  6. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Giovanni Traverso

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Contributions

S.B., S.P., A.R., K.B. and G.T. conceived and designed the research. S.B., S.P. and A.R. designed the kirigami prototypes. S.B., S.P. and Y.S. performed the manufacturing, in vitro friction testing and human-gait force-plate measurements. A.R. performed the simulations. S.B., S.P., A.R., K.B. and G.T. discussed and analysed the results and wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript and provided active and valuable feedback.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Katia Bertoldi or Giovanni Traverso.

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Competing interests

A.R. and K.B. are inventors on a patent application (patent no. US2019/0232598A1) describing buckling-induced kirigami. S.B., S.P., A.R., K.B. and G.T. are co-inventors on a provisional patent application (no. 62913419) for the technology described. Complete details of all relationships for profit and not for profit for G.T. can be found at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/szi7vnr4a2ajb56/AABs5N5i0q9AfT1IqIJAE-T5a?dl=0. The remaining authors disclose no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary notes, figures and video captions

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Steel kirigami shoe grips attached to a shoe sole.

Supplementary Video 2

Finite-element simulation of a kirigami unit cell.

Supplementary Code 1

Linear post-buckling analysis for the kirigami simulator.

Supplementary Code 2

ABAQUS script for simulating buckling-induced kirigami.

Supplementary Code 3

Nonlinear post-buckling analysis and compression for the kirigami simulator.

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Babaee, S., Pajovic, S., Rafsanjani, A. et al. Bioinspired kirigami metasurfaces as assistive shoe grips. Nat Biomed Eng 4, 778–786 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-0564-3

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