Giga-voxel computational morphogenesis for structural design
Giga-voxel computational morphogenesis for structural design
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DOI：
10.1038/nature23911
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发表时间：
2017-10-05
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Sigmund, Ole
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Aage, Niels;Andreassen, Erik;Sigmund, Ole
在从助听器到汽车和飞机等工业产品的设计中，材料的分布是为了最大限度地提高性能并降低成本。从历史上看，人类的直觉和洞察力推动了机械设计的发展，最近又得到了计算机辅助设计方法的帮助。被称为拓扑优化的计算机辅助方法可以实现不受限制的设计自由度，并在减轻重量方面显示出很大的希望，但由于当前优化方法的分辨率限制，其适用性迄今为止仅限于单个组件或简单结构的设计（1，2）。在这里，我们报告了一个在超级计算机上实现的计算形态生成工具，这使得设计具有千兆体素分辨率，比以前报道的高出两个数量级。这种解决方案提供了对结构内材料最佳分布的深入了解，由于扩大现有建模和优化框架的挑战，迄今为止无法实现。作为一个例子，我们应用该工具的设计的内部结构的全尺寸飞机机翼。优化的全翼设计在长度范围从几十米到毫米的范围内具有前所未有的结构细节，并且有趣的是，与自然存在的骨骼结构（例如鸟喙）具有惊人的相似性。我们估计，与目前使用的飞机机翼设计相比，我们的优化设计相当于减少2- 5%的质量，这意味着每架飞机每年减少约40-200吨的燃料消耗。我们的形态生成过程通常不仅适用于机械设计，而且适用于流动系统（3），天线（4），纳米光学（5）和微系统（6，7）。
In the design of industrial products ranging from hearing aids to automobiles and aeroplanes, material is distributed so as to maximize the performance and minimize the cost. Historically, human intuition and insight have driven the evolution of mechanical design, recently assisted by computer-aided design approaches. The computer-aided approach known as topology optimization enables unrestricted design freedom and shows great promise with regard to weight savings, but its applicability has so far been limited to the design of single components or simple structures, owing to the resolution limits of current optimization methods(1,2).Here we report a computational morphogenesis tool, implemented on a supercomputer, that produces designs with giga-voxel resolutionmore than two orders of magnitude higher than previously reported. Such resolution provides insights into the optimal distribution of material within a structure that were hitherto unachievable owing to the challenges of scaling up existing modelling and optimization frameworks. As an example, we apply the tool to the design of the internal structure of a full-scale aeroplane wing. The optimized full-wing design has unprecedented structural detail at length scales ranging from tens of metres to millimetres and, intriguingly, shows remarkable similarity to naturally occurring bone structures in, for example, bird beaks. We estimate that our optimized design corresponds to a reduction in mass of 2-5 per cent compared to currently used aeroplane wing designs, which translates into a reduction in fuel consumption of about 40-200 tonnes per year per aeroplane. Our morphogenesis process is generally applicable, not only to mechanical design, but also to flow systems(3), antennas(4), nano-optics(5) and micro-systems(6,7).