Teaching Design of Mechanical Experiments Based on Thermal Deformation of Metamaterials

In response to the heightened demands of the new technological revolution on students’ practical and innovative capabilities, this study aims to expand students’ advanced mechanical knowledge and experimental skills. Based on the thermal deformation concepts of materials covered in fundamental mechanics courses such as Mechanics of Materials and Engineering Mechanics, we have innovatively designed a mechanical curriculum experiment teaching program. The teaching program carried out thermal deformation experimental teaching for a kind of metamaterial: elucidating the regulation principles of thermal expansion of the metamaterial and carrying out virtual experiments of numerical simulation by the finite element method; preparing metamaterials by the process of fused deposition molding (FDM) and carrying out experimental tests of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) by using the digital image correlation (DIC) method, so as to validate that the metamaterial has the ability to regulate CTEs from positive to negative values. This experimental teaching integrates virtual simulation and experimental testing, which not only cultivates students' practical and innovative abilities, but also organically integrates scientific research and teaching, effectively improving the quality of student training in research universities.