CAREER: Incorporating Geometric Rules and Cost in Topology Optimization for Efficient Design of Manufacturable and Economically-Viable Structures

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Topology optimization is a powerful computational aid for exploring novel structural design concepts without requiring a preconceived shape of the structure. The resulting designs are highly optimized for their application, enabling lightweight high-performance structures. However, the designs tend to have an intricate organic-looking structure making them challenging to manufacture reliably and economically. Prior attempts to impose manufacturing constraints during the topology optimization process have had limited success. Furthermore, current methods cannot directly consider manufacturing costs, making it difficult for designers to factor in economic objectives or constraints. This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports fundamental research to formulate the first framework to systematically incorporate geometric design rules and manufacturing cost in topology optimization, and to integrate this framework with educational activities that improve the attitudes of underrepresented minorities towards STEM fields. This research will enable the conceptual design and optimization of lightweight, high-performance, and economically-viable structures with applications across a wide range of engineering industries. The new design capabilities will have the potential to significantly reduce manufacturing and R&D costs and thereby increase the economic competitiveness of American manufacturers. This award will also positively impact underrepresented minorities through an integrated education plan aimed at increasing student self-efficacy and stimulating their participation in STEM. The educational program includes an engaging, virtual-reality based after-school program for middle school students. This program will also engage and impact K-12 teachers and undergraduate and graduate students, and it will be a conduit to communicate research outcomes to the wider public and the research community.Although topology optimization is a successful technique for structural design, its impact is limited by challenges in incorporating manufacturing constrains and economic considerations into the optimization process. These gaps are rooted in the difficulty to express many manufacturing-driven geometric requirements in terms of the design representations used by existing techniques, the discrete nature of some geometric features, and the fact that manufacturing cost can be a non-smooth function of the design. This CAREER project will make three major intellectual contributions to the computational design of structures, namely the coupling of feature-based design representations with 1) global optimization methods to escape entrapment in undesired local minima in the presence of many geometric design rules; 2) discrete optimization methods to accommodate discrete geometric features; and 3) parametric cost models and non-smooth optimization methods to incorporate cost in the topology optimization problem. The new techniques will be validated against benchmarks and demonstrated on engineering problems in collaboration with industry partners.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.