DMREF/GOALI: Novel 3D Experiments, Simulations, and Optimization for Accelerated Design of Metallic Foams

开孔金属泡沫是一类令人兴奋的结构材料，由相互连接的金属韧带组成的网络，导致了一个有趣的泡沫建筑。在过去的二十年里，这些低密度材料因其在多功能应用中的公认潜力而引起了人们的极大关注。例如，除了作为轻质承重结构外，开孔金属泡沫还有可能同时用作储能设备的电极、生物医学植入物中新生成的骨和血管的宿主，或者作为先进高速地面运输的冲击减振器和隔音器。尽管有潜力，但开孔金属泡沫在更广泛的多功能应用中的广泛部署仍然受到低效、反复试错制造方法的阻碍。这项旨在革新和设计我们的未来的设计材料奖(DMREF)学术与工业联系机会(GOALI)奖支持学术和工业联合研究工作，以实现开孔金属泡沫的更高效和智能设计，并实现对目标应用的性能的精确控制。这一结果将通过提高泡沫的制造效率和可裁剪性为该行业带来显著的改善，这将有助于扩大泡沫在能源、国防、生物医学、航空航天和汽车行业的部署。研究团队将主持外展活动，让K-12、本科生和研究生院的学生接触到这种多学科的STEM研究。DMREF Goali奖支持研究，通过将3D材料表征中的新兴方法与多尺度建模和贝叶斯优化相结合，实现开孔金属泡沫的加速和基于性能的设计范式。新的设计范式将通过发现泡沫塑料中的工艺-结构-性能关系而成为可能。具体目标包括：试验性地修改制造参数以生产开孔金属泡沫塑料的变种；进行基于三维同步加速器的晶体取向测量和现场X射线计算机层析实验，以获得对泡沫塑料的分层结构和多尺度变形机制的前所未有的洞察；使用高保真、多尺度(颗粒到连续)的有限元建模来研究所制造的泡沫塑料的微观机械行为和预测性能；对合成泡沫塑料变种进行虚拟测试，以进一步填充金属泡沫塑料设计空间；以及对基于模拟的结果使用贝叶斯优化，以使得能够为目标性能度量选择最优的分层结构(即，拓扑和结晶学)。这项研究将首次解耦韧带拓扑和底层晶体结构对开孔泡沫金属微观力学行为的影响(包括微屈曲、滑移的局部积累和裂纹形核位置的分布)，这被认为是影响其性能的因素。

Open-cell metallic foams are an exciting class of structural materials that comprise a network of interconnected metallic ligaments, resulting in an interesting foam architecture. These low-density materials have garnered much attention over the past two decades based on their recognized potential for use in multi-functional applications. For example, in addition to serving as light-weight, load-bearing structures, open-cell metallic foams have the potential to serve concurrently as electrodes for energy-storage devices, as hosts for newly generated bone and blood vessels in biomedical implants, or as impact absorbers and noise insulators for advanced high-speed ground transportation. Despite their potential, the widespread deployment of open-cell metallic foams for a broader range of multi-functional applications remains hampered by inefficient, trial-and-error manufacturing approaches. This Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) award supports a joint academic-industry research effort to enable more efficient and intelligent design of open-cell metallic foams, and to achieve precise control over their performance for targeted applications. The results will provide dramatic improvements for the industry by increasing both the manufacturing efficiency and the tailorability of the foams, which will help to expand deployment of the foams throughout the energy, defense, biomedical, aerospace, and automotive industries. The research team will host outreach activities to expose students in K-12, undergraduate, and graduate school to this multi-disciplinary STEM research.This DMREF GOALI award supports research to enable an accelerated and performance-based design paradigm for open-cell metallic foams through the integration of emergent methods in 3D materials characterization with multi-scale modeling and Bayesian optimization. The new design paradigm will be made possible through the discovery of process-structure-property relationships in the foams. The specific objectives include: experimentally modifying manufacturing parameters to produce variants of open-cell metallic foams; performing 3D synchrotron-based crystal-orientation measurements and in-situ X-ray computed tomography experiments to gain unprecedented insight into the hierarchical structure and multi-scale deformation mechanisms of the foam; using high-fidelity, multi-scale (grain-to-continuum) finite-element modeling to investigate micromechanical behavior and predict performance of the as-manufactured foams; conducting virtual tests on synthetic-foam variants to further populate a metallic-foam design space; and using Bayesian optimization on the simulation-based results to enable selection of optimal hierarchical structures (i.e. topology and crystallography) for targeted performance metrics. The research will be a first to decouple the effects of ligament topology and underlying crystal structure on micromechanical behavior of open-cell metallic foams (including microbuckling, local accumulation of slip, and distribution of crack-nucleation sites), which is postulated to influence its performance.