Research Projects

The proposed project aims to develop a rationalized and additive manufacturing compatible formulation of multiscale topology optimization, integrating it with commercial additive manufacturing technology. The project will focus on three objectives: laying down a novel multiscale optimization formulation that integrates manufacturing and machine constraints at different scales of hierarchical lattice structures, handling the computational cost of multiscale design optimization by developing fast solution algorithms focusing on efficient sensitivity analysis for material and structural topology optimization subproblems, and integrating a computational optimization framework that takes advantage of the inherent parallelism of the decomposed formulation, efficient solution algorithms, and existing in-house code and open-source high-performance libraries. The project will also develop data transfer protocols that allow continuous printing from the microscale to the component scales. The proposed framework will be the first AM-compatible multiscale topology optimization workflow for 3D printing of hierarchical structures, and it will be a starting point for various applications in civil infrastructure, aerospace, automobile industries, and biomedical industries. The framework can be mutated for digital construction applications and explored in the future for topology optimization driven 3D printing of concrete infrastructure.