The hard part about “jamming” research is defining the shapes that are optimized for the jamming process. At the University of Chicago, Prof. Henrich Jaeger’s lab researchers used “a computer algorithm—referred to as an 'evolutionary optimization'… to answer this question.”
Once the optimized shape was determined, they turned to their lab’s 3D printer to create hundreds of instances of their test shapes that would soon be squished in their force gauge.
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Image and Video Courtesy of the University of Chicago