Project description
3D printed design optimisation of metamaterials at small scales
The field of metamaterials involves designing complicated, composite engineering parts which can demonstrate properties that are impossible to find in naturally occurring materials. Additive manufacturing technology is making it possible to create many more metamaterial shapes and patterns at ever smaller scales. Advanced experimental and numerical multi-scale methods are needed to leverage the potential of additive manufacturing and produce damage-tolerant metamaterials. The EU-funded MOAMMM project will develop a data-driven methodology for (micro)structural properties that should facilitate the design of optimised printed shock absorbers. Targeted applications include shock absorbers that either suffer from fatigue (such as in sport shoe soles) or dissipate the maximum energy during their failure (such as in bicycle helmets).
Objective
The emergence of metamaterials has opened a new paradigm in designing engineering parts in which the design of full structural parts can be optimised together with the metamaterial they are locally composed of. Moreover, additional morphing at local and global scales may support their adaptation to variable loading conditions and shifted user needs. As polymeric materials can fulfill simultaneously structural mechanical and functional requirements, the combination of this design paradigm with additive manufacturing can support/generate novel applications. However, many challenges are left in order for this change of paradigm to become a reality:
• To improve metamaterial design and fabrication technique to produce damage tolerant metamaterials
• Robust and efficient concurrent multiscale techniques should be developed as part of a multiscale optimisation problem.
• Because micro-structure and material properties suffer from uncertainties affecting structural responses, techniques for uncertainty quantification should be developed for this multiscale design problem.
These challenges can only be addressed by considering experimental and numerical multi-scale methods. However, current existing approaches are limited in several aspects because on the one hand of the difficulty in representing the micro-structure and characterising micro-scale constituent materials, and on the other hand in the computational cost inherent to these approaches. The overall objective of this project is to develop a data-driven methodology relying on a structural properties-micro-structure linkage and able to design optimised shock-absorption devices based on bi-stable metamaterials and printable using additive manufacturing. Targeted applications are user-optimised shock absorber devices which either potentially suffer from fatigue such as in the case of sport shoe soles or which should dissipate the maximum energy during their failure such as in the bicycle helmets.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
4000 Liege
Belgium