Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PRE-ECO (A new paradigm to re-engineering printed composites)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-08-01 do 2023-01-31
This project is for an exploratory study into a radical new approach to the problem of design, manufacturing and analysis of tow-steered printed composite materials. The program will act as a pre-echo, a precursor, to: 1) implement global/local models for the simulation and analysis of VATs with unprecedented accuracy from fibre-matrix to component scales; 2) develop a (hybrid) metamodeling platform based on machine learning for defect sensitivity and optimization; and 3) set new rules and best-practices to design for manufacturing. A 5-year, highly inter-disciplinary programme is planned, encompassing structural mechanics, numerical calculus, 3D printing and AFP, measurements and testing of advanced composites, data science and artificial intelligence, and constrained optimization problems to finally fill the gap between the design and the digital manufacturing chain of advanced printed materials.
An heuristic optimisation code based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been developed for structural optimisation purposes. This tool, which is ideal when the objective function is the mass minimisation, will be further developed in the future to deal with both continuous and discrete design variable values, taking into account the effect of defects concurrently.
Other activities include: investigating the possibility of reducing the strain/stress concentrations in an open-hole plate using localized 3D printed carbon fibre reinforcements; using non-local elasticity models to conduct crack propagation analysis; solving inverse problems (e.g. detection of damage or printing issues) via algorithms based on artificial intelligence; extending developed methods to thin-ply composites for deployable structures, elastomers/soft matter and other applications of practical relevance.