ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biomechanics
Novel Design of Tubular Metamaterials with Sign-Switchable Poisson's Ratio and Tunable Mechanical Properties for Intestinal Stents
Provisionally accepted
Yongtao Lyu1,2,3
Volha Siniauskaya1,2
Jian Jiang1*
Hao Wang2
Lingqi Meng3
Sergei Bosiakov4Mohammed Rafiq Abdul Kadir5- 1Department of Spinal Surgery, Central Hospital of Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
- 2School of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
- 3Dalian University of Technology Belarusian State University Joint Institute, Dalian, China
- 4Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus
- 5Department of Biomedical Engineering, Universiti Malaya Faculty of Engineering, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Current intestinal stents used to restore patency face limitations due to the rigidity of metal structures and the premature degradation of biopolymer alternatives. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop stents that are flexible, radially strong, and able to adapt to the dynamic conditions within the body. This study introduces a novel tubular mechanical metamaterial featuring a sign-switchable Poisson's ratio and tunable mechanical properties, achieved by integrating hexagonal unit cells with positive Poisson's ratio and re-entrant unit cells with negative Poisson's ratio. The structure exhibits a negative Poisson's ratio under tensile loading across all configurations, whereas under compression, the Poisson's ratio was transited from negative to positive due to self-contact between triangular struts, enabling the distinctive sign-switching behavior. Experimental uniaxial compression tests and finite element analyses were performed to validate the proposed design and assess its mechanical performance. Results reveal that the geometric gap between the horizontal struts in the concave unit cells serves as a crucial tuning parameter: increasing this gap delays the onset of sign-switching during compression while exerting minimal influence on the tensile response. The stiffness, yield strength, and energy absorption capacity are shown to be highly adjustable through this geometric control. Overall, the metamaterial demonstrates superior energy absorption and tunable stiffness, making it a promising candidate for applications in intestinal stents.
Keywords: adjustable energy absorption, Intestinal stents, sign-switchable Poisson's ratio, tubular mechanical metamaterial, tunable stiffness
Received: 02 Jan 2026; Accepted: 02 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Lyu, Siniauskaya, Jiang, Wang, Meng, Bosiakov and Kadir. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jian Jiang
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