Stress-guided Structural Design via Force-Induced Material Growth

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rüdiger Westermann
• Subject Area: Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 409228352

The main objective of this proposal is to continue our research from the first three years towards the application of force-induced material growth for 3D structural design. This shift is driven by the insight that a 3D stress-following conforming lattice, where exactly one major, minor and medium principal stress line meet at each lattice vertex, does not exist in general. Thus, we will build upon our results in 2D and integrate principal stress-guided material initialization into topology optimization to form a 3D lattice that approximately follows the principal stress lines. To achieve this, however, we will need to address a number of challenges: Since in 3D, topology optimization tends to form wall-like structures instead of growing a truss-like structure along the principal stress directions, suitable regularizations of the optimizer need to be developed. Once an optimized binary material field is generated, this structure needs to be transformed into a consistent mesh structure via post-processing and meshing approaches. To generate a design with a more homogeneous distribution of lattice elements and less degeneracies, topology optimization using globally applied surface loads will be considered.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Jun Wu