Designing Complex Structures Enabled by Advanced Manufacturing

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The past thirty years have been a golden era for rapid improvements in manufacturing technology. As examples, we can fabricate nearly any shape from polymer, metal or ceramic using stereolithography, laser sintering, and other forms of 3D printing. Advanced fibre composites can be manufactured with exceptionally highly tailored fibre configurations through automated fibre placement (AFP). Pulsed electrodeposition enables coating almost any arbitrary geometry with ultra-high performance nanocrystalline metals. Because of the design flexibility facilitated by these and other advanced manufacturing techniques, engineers have been enabled to design lightweight, efficient structures that are highly customized for specific applications. In the near term, many advanced manufacturing processes will be used to duplicate the output of conventional technologies; this will not come close to unlocking the exceptional promise of advanced manufacturing. Where advanced manufacturing technology will shine is when products are dramatically redesigned to exploit the new possibilities enabled by new manufacturing techniques. Structures and products that are finely tailored to meet specific application requirements are feasible when advanced manufacturing techniques are used effectively. Because of the immense design flexibility available due to advanced manufacturing, such redesigns must be informed by computational methods that allow a human designer to manage an enormous number of design variables. This is the focus of our work. We are exploring computational methods for optimizing structures that are fabricated using 3D printing methods, while accounting for the material variability that is characteristic of 3D printed systems. For fibre composites, were are creating systems that will help designers to configure composites made using AFP so that they are light, strong, stiff and meet complicated structural requirement precisely. Our work in hybrid nanometal structures involves characterizing the mechanical behaviour of these new material systems and creating computational tools to help design these complex systems. The impact of our research will be dramatic improvements in the products designers can create using nanometal electrodeposition, advanced fibre placement and 3D printing.