Optimal design approaches for adaptive structures: Prof.Mary Frecker

Smart materials and structures are enabling complex shape change
in applications from self-folding origami to metamaterials to
medical devices. This presentation will focus on recent work on
modeling and design optimization of self-folding origami actuated
by electrostrictive terpolymer and magneto active elastomer
materials. Since finite element analysis of these soft materials
with large deformations due to multi-field actuation is highly
nonlinear and can be computationally intensive, the problem is
decomposed into two stages. The first stage optimizes a
computationally efficient reduced order rigid body model, while
the second stage implements the full finite element analysis only
to refine the features. Ongoing work in optimal design of
structures enabled by functionally graded superelastic NiTi
will also be highlighted, with a focus on design for
additive manufacturing and applications in
metamaterials and medical devices