Design of Multi-material and Fiber-Reinforced Structures via Topology Optimization with Geometric Primitives

Speaker: Dr. Julián Norato, an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut. 

Abstract: Topology optimization (TO) techniques are powerful tools in the exploration of novel designs for components, structural assemblies, and architected materials. Advances in manufacturing techniques have expanded the possibilities of fabricating designs produced by TO. Density and level-set TO methods represent the structure using continuous fields, which endow the optimization with substantial freedom and thus render highly efficient designs. However, in many instances fabrication constraints or functional requirements preclude the realization of these organic designs. In particular, some manufacturing processes and functional requirements favor structural designs that consist of the union of geometric primitives. In this talk, I will describe research efforts advanced by our group to design structures and architected materials made of primitives. The foundations of these efforts are the geometry projection TO techniques pioneered by our group, in which the structure is exclusively represented by primitives. In geometry projection methods, the parameters describing the primitives are mapped onto a continuous density field for efficient analysis with non-conforming meshes and efficient optimization with gradient-based techniques. I will present results of our work on TO techniques for the design of three materials system: multi-material and composite-material structural assemblies; multi-material, multi-scale, and programmable truss lattices; and ceramic, porous bone implants fabricated via direct-ink writing and used for bone repair.

Bio: Dr. Julián Norato is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut.  Prior to joining UConn in 2014, he worked for nine years for Caterpillar, where he was responsible for the Product Optimization Group. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Norato is a recipient of a 2017 ONR Young Investigator Program award, a 2018 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2019 ASME Design Automation Young Investigator Award. He is a Review Editor for the Journal of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization and an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design.