Knitting Multistability

ABSTRACT Curved elastic shells can be fabricated through molding or by harnessing residual stresses. These shells often exhibit snap‐through behavior and multistability when loaded. We present a unique way of fabricating curved elastic shells that exhibit multistability and snap‐through behavior, weft‐knitting. The knitting process introduces internal stresses into the textile sheet, which lead to complex 3D curvatures. We explore the relationship between the geometry and the mechanical response, identifying a parameter space where the textiles are multistable. We harness the snapping behavior and shape change through multistability to design soft conductive switches with built‐in haptic feedback and incorporate these textile switches into two wearable devices and one reconfigurable lamp. This work will allow us to harness the nonlinear mechanical behavior of textiles to create functional, soft, and seamless devices.