Lightweight brain-coral-inspired aperiodic lattices with tailored strength and energy absorption

Periodic cellular architectures can undergo coordinated buckling, making stable collapse challenging in lightweight structures requiring both high collapse resistance and energy absorption. Here, we introduce brain-coral-inspired aperiodic lattices generated from Gray–Scott reaction–diffusion patterns. Smooth-walled prismatic lattices with controlled relative density were fabricated by masked stereolithography and evaluated under quasi-static out-of-plane compression using experiments and finite element simulations. At 30% nominal relative density, the baseline coral-inspired lattice achieved an initial collapse stress of 5.8 MPa, 81% and 36% higher than those of the hexagonal and triangular honeycombs, respectively. This collapse-strength advantage did not translate into the highest specific energy absorption among the reference lattices. Intermediate panels had limited influence on collapse strength but compartmentalized deformation. Consequently, specific energy absorption (SEA) increased from approximately 1.8 J/g to over 6 J/g in three- and four-panel configurations, with the four-panel lattice outperforming all tested references in SEA. Plastic-strain and plastic-dissipation fields showed that the panels distributed crushing across multiple compartments, supporting the distinct roles of wall morphology and segmentation. Design-space exploration identified architectures with greater collapse resistance, which was linked most strongly to closed-pore area fraction and junction density. With four panels, the best-performing architecture achieved a specific strength of 17.5 MPa cm 3 /g and specific energy absorption of 10.45 J/g. Contextual benchmarking placed the selected architectures in a region of high normalised specific strength and energy absorption. These findings establish Gray–Scott-generated morphology and structural segmentation as complementary design variables for tailoring collapse initiation and post-collapse energy absorption.