Some results on the Guest-Hutchinson modes and periodic mechanisms of the Kagome lattice metamaterial

Abstract: Lattice materials are interesting mechanical metamaterials, and their mechanical properties are often related to the presence of mechanisms. The existence of periodic mechanisms can be indicated by the presence of Guest-Hutchinson (GH) modes, since GH modes are sometimes infinitesimal versions of periodic mechanisms. However, not every GH mode comes from a periodic mechanism. This paper focuses on: (1) clarifying the relationship between GH modes and periodic mechanisms; and (2) answering the question: which GH modes come from periodic mechanisms? We focus primarily on a special lattice system, the Kagome lattice. Our results include explicit formulas for all two-periodic mechanisms of the Kagome lattice, and a necessary condition for a GH mode to come from a periodic mechanism in general. We apply our necessary condition to the two-periodic GH modes, and also to some special GH modes found by Fleck and Hutchinson using Bloch-type boundary conditions on the unit cell of the Kagome lattice.