The primary goal of this project is to demonstrate that parts with designed mesostructure have better structural and/or compliance performance, per weight, than parts with bulk material, foams, or other mesostructured approaches. Mesostructure refers to features within a part that have sizes between micro and macro-scales, for example, small truss structures, honeycombs, and foams. To achieve this goal, research from the design, CAD, optimization, mechanics, and manufacturing areas will be integrated. A method and software system will be developed to synthesize parts and compliant mechanisms in 2D and 3D. Research advances in the areas of multi-scale mechanics modeling, geometric modeling, compliant mechanism synthesis, and topology optimization are expected. Part and mechanism designs will be fabricated using additive manufacturing (rapid prototyping) machines to demonstrate and test the resulting system. It is expected that this research will establish a design process that will take advantage of the capability of additive processing to realize hetergeneous and complex structures that cannot be achieved by traditional manufacturing methods.
If successful, this research could provide a significant benefit to society by providing products that utilize material much more efficiently than currently possible, leading to improved fuel economy for cars and planes, robot arms with better performance (lighter weight), prosthetics that adapt to their wearers, and improved filtration media (designed compliance can aid solid-liquid separation), among other benefits. Other broader impacts will be achieved. Graduate and undergraduate students will be recruited from under-represented groups. Research results will be incorporated into several graduate and undergraduate courses. Additionally, advances will contribute to theory and methods for design across multiple size scales. These advances are expected to apply beyond engineering design to mechanics of materials, manufacturing, materials science fields.
