Rational design of artificial microstructured metamaterials with advanced mechanical and physical properties that are not accessible in nature materials is very important. Making use of node rotation and ligament bending deformation features of chiral materials, two types of innovative 3D chiral metamaterials are proposed, namely chiral- chiral- antichiral and chiral- antichiral- antichiral metamaterials. In-situ compression and uniaxial tensile tests are performed for studying the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of these two types of 3D chiral metamaterials. Novel deformation mechanisms along different directions are explored and analyzed, such as: uniform spatial rotation deformation, tensile-shearing directed (compression-shearing directed), tensile-expansion directed (compression-shrinkage directed) deformation mechanisms of 3D chiral metamaterials, and competitions between different types of deformation mechanisms are discussed. The proposed 3D chiral metamaterials represents a series of metamaterials with robust microstructures design feasibilities.

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Auxetics with negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) can expand dimensions along the direction perpendicular to the tensile direction, such as rigid rotation, reentrant and chiral structures, etc. The mechanical performances of chiral metastructures are closely related to internal defects and interactions between defects. In this paper, two types of irregular chiral structures with Gaussian dispersion of circular node positions and missing ligaments are designed, namely: antitetrachiral metastructure and tetrachiral hybrid metastructure. These two types of chiral metastructures are characterized by node radius, ligament thickness, ligament length, the circular node center dispersion range, and missing ligament percentages. Effects of random node distribution range and cell wall missing percentage on the elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio of chiral metastructures are investigated through experimental tests and finite element (FE) simulation systematically. Through dimensionless analysis, it is found that ligament thickness has remarkable influence on the negative Poisson's ratio. Effect of missing ligament on the mechanical properties of the structure is greater than effect of random node center dispersion. With the increase of ligament missing percentage, the resultant modulus of chiral metastructures decreases, and the corresponding NPR increases.