Elements: Elastica - A software ecosystem for modeling, simulation, design, and control of soft, compliant, and heterogenous structures interacting with their environment

这个持续科学创新的网络基础设施（CSSI）项目旨在将Elastica建立为一流的、开源的、随时可用的生态系统，用于模拟、分析、设计和控制由弹性细长元件组成的复杂结构。目标是使研究人员能够在被确定为基础和国家战略重要性的三个知识空白方面取得进展：(1)缺乏连续的，兼容的和可配置的结构，设备和机器人的严格建模和工程设计方法；(2)缺乏能够有效协调这些分布式系统的几乎无限自由度的控制方法；(3)缺乏将生物材料纳入活体生物机器的专门模型和设计方法，将完整的循环连接到第一点。该项目将产生一个通用的计算框架，解决生物学、机器人和控制交叉领域的一系列独特问题，从而通过先进的计算方法提高制造业的竞争力。这一努力还得到强有力的外联部分的补充。事实上，将Elastica应用于动物运动和生物机器人具有巨大的潜力，可以吸引广泛的想象力，尤其是年轻的观众。通过强调自然世界的联系，好奇心和创造力将被培养，将注意力吸引到数学、物理、生物和高级计算上。特别值得一提的是，paper2tree项目让当地代表性不足的社区参与到与科学发现相关的植树活动中来，该项目将吸引小学生参与。在这种情况下，这项工作将增强Elastica的建模能力和解决方案方法，目标是在复杂环境中进行数万万亿次浮点运算到千万亿次浮点运算级的模拟，涉及数百万个杆。同时，为了最大限度地采用和影响，将创建一个由预处理/后处理工具和接口组成的网络基础设施生态系统，这些工具和接口以易于定制的管道组织。一个专注于科学、计算和网络基础设施创新的结构化项目计划将提供：(i)一个可扩展的、通用的、高效的coserat杆求解器，它包含了各种材料模型和环境接口条件，并且可以在从台式机到异构计算集群的一系列计算架构上运行；预先建立的与解决上述已查明的知识差距有关的特定学科模块的基准和核实；（iii）一套预处理/后处理工具，以协助建立特定领域的工作流程。在整个过程中，开放科学和用户/开发人员支持将是加速采用、促进影响和催化创新的核心。该奖项由先进网络基础设施办公室颁发，并得到工程局土木、机械和制造创新司的联合支持。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) project seeks to establish Elastica as a best-in-class, open source, and ready-to-use ecosystem for the simulation, analysis, design, and control of complex structures made of elastic, slender elements. The goal is to enable researchers to make inroads in three knowledge gaps identified as foundational and of national strategic importance: (1) scarcity of rigorous modeling and engineering design methods for continuum, compliant and configurable structures, devices and robots; (2) paucity of control methods able to effectively coordinate the virtually infinite degrees of freedom that characterize these distributed systems; (3) lack of models and design methods specialized to biomaterials to be incorporated in living biological machines, connecting full circle to the first point. This project will result in a versatile computing framework that tackles a unique set of problems at the intersection of biology, robotics and control, thus increasing competitiveness in manufacturing via advanced computational methods. This effort is complemented by a strong outreach component. Indeed, applications of Elastica to animal locomotion and biological robots have great potential to capture the imagination of a broad, especially younger audience. By highlighting the natural world connection, curiosity and creativity will be fostered, drawing attention to math, physics, biology and advanced computing. Particularly, the paper2tree project that involves local, underrepresented communities in planting trees associated to scientific discoveries, will be leveraged to engage elementary-school students.Within this context, this effort will augment Elastica’s modeling capabilities and solution methods, aiming at tens-of-teraflops to petaflops-grade simulations entailing millions of rods in complex environments. Concurrently, to maximize adoption and impact, a cyberinfrastructure ecosystem of pre/post processing tools and interfaces, organized in easily customizable pipelines, will be created. A structured project plan focused on science, computing, and cyberinfrastructure innovation will deliver: (i) A scalable, versatile, and efficient Cosserat rod solver that incorporates a variety of material models and environmental interface conditions, and that can run on a range of computing architectures from desktops to heterogeneous computing clusters; (ii) Benchmarked and verified discipline-specific modules of prebuilt primitives relevant to address the identified knowledge gaps above; (iii) A suite of both pre/postprocessing tools to assist in setting up domain-specific workflows. Throughout, open science and users/developers support will be core, to accelerate adoption, foster impact and catalyze innovation.This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation within the Directorate for Engineering.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.