Scientists from Scotland and Italy have created a new type of 3D-printed material that could greatly improve safety in car crashes.
The material, made from steel, has a special internal structure that twists and absorbs energy when hit, helping to protect passengers during collisions.
This breakthrough material, known as a twisting metamaterial, behaves very differently from the foams and metal crumple zones used in cars today.
Traditional safety materials are designed to handle only one kind of impact—they either stay stiff or compress in a fixed way.
But the new 3D-printed material can adjust its response depending on how hard it is hit, providing both soft cushioning for minor bumps and strong protection for serious crashes.
The research, published in the journal Advanced Materials, was led by Professor Shanmugam Kumar from the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering.
His team used a 3D-printing process called additive manufacturing to build the material with extreme precision.
This allowed them to create a complex pattern known as a gyroid lattice, which looks like a web of interconnected tunnels.
When pressure is applied, this lattice twists like a corkscrew instead of just compressing. That twisting motion helps spread and absorb the energy from an impact more efficiently.
In experiments, the researchers tested three different versions of the material to see how it reacted to different types of pressure—quick, sharp impacts and slower, heavier loads.
When the material was locked so it couldn’t twist at all, it absorbed the most energy—about 15.36 joules for every gram of material.
When it was allowed to twist freely, the stiffness dropped by around 10%. And when the material was forced to twist too much, its energy absorption dropped by about one-third.
These results show that by controlling how much the material twists, engineers can tune how it reacts to different crashes.
Professor Kumar explained that current vehicle safety materials can’t adapt to different situations, but this new one can.
“The materials used in most vehicles today are static,” he said. “Our adaptive twisting metamaterials don’t need electronics or hydraulics to change how they behave—they do it mechanically through rotation.”
The team believes this innovation could one day be used not only in cars but also in aircraft, helping both industries make vehicles safer and more efficient. It may even have other uses, such as turning impact energy into motion that can be harvested and reused.
