Concurrent goal-oriented materials-by-design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a concurrent, goal-oriented optimization framework for materials and structural design, enabling simultaneous optimization against system-wide performance, demonstrated through ballistic impact simulations of magnesium alloy and polyurea.

Contribution

It presents a novel simultaneous optimization approach for materials and structures, improving over traditional sequential methods, with a computational framework for high-performance simulations.

Findings

Concurrent optimization outperforms sequential methods in performance.

The framework effectively handles complex impact simulations.

Significant improvements in material-structure design efficiency.

Abstract

The development of new materials and structures for extreme conditions including impact remains a continuing challenge despite steady advances. Design is currently accomplished using a sequential approach: an optimal material is first developed using the process-structure-properties paradigm, where performance is measured against a blended measure. Then, the structure is optimized while holding the material properties fixed. In this paper, we propose an alternative concurrent and goal-oriented optimization approach where both the material properties and the structure are optimized simultaneously against an overall system-wide performance measure. We develop a non-intrusive, high-performance computational framework based on DAKOTA and GMSH and use it to study the ballistic impact of a double-layer plate of strong AZ31B magnesium alloy and soft polyurea. We show that the proposed concurrent and goal-oriented optimization strategy can provide significant advantage over the traditional sequential optimization approach.