Techniques for generating materials to satisfy design criteria

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11003807-B2
Application number	US-201514951366-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 24, 2015
Priority date	Nov 25, 2014
Publication date	May 11, 2021
Grant date	May 11, 2021

Abstract

A design application is configured to determine design problem geometry and design criteria associated with a design problem to be solved. Based on this information, the design application identifies one or more design approaches to creating a custom material having specific material attributes needed to solve the design problem. The design application then executes the design approaches to create material designs that reflect one or more custom materials. With these designs as input, a manufacturing machine may then construct physical instances of those custom materials. A given custom material may have a unique combination of material attributes potentially not found among existing materials. Additionally, a design fabricated from a custom material may better satisfy the design criteria than a design fabricated from a known material.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media including instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to fabricate a custom material, by performing the steps of:
determining, based on applying one or more design approaches to a design problem described in a problem specification, a set of material attributes that satisfies at least one design criterion associated with a design problem;
generating a plurality of candidate material designs that have the set of material attributes, wherein a first candidate material design in the plurality of candidate material designs includes a custom material formed from two or more pre-existing materials;
selecting the first candidate material design from the plurality of candidate material designs;
generating instructions for fabricating the custom material from two or more pre-existing materials; and
displaying, via a graphical user interface (GUI), a design space that includes:
one or more components of the design problem, and
a custom material geometry representing a repeatable pattern of the custom material, wherein the custom material geometry includes component geometries for each of the two or more pre-existing materials that combine to form the custom material; and

causing, based on the material design, a manufacturing machine to fabricate the custom material from the two or more pre-existing materials by fabricating the custom material geometry.

2. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1 , further comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the step of generating the problem specification by:
synthesizing the custom material geometry; and
identifying the at least one design criterion that includes at least one of a design objective, a design constraint, or a boundary condition associated with the design problem.

3. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein generating the set of candidate material comprises:
identifying a set of material attributes associated with a simulated material that satisfies the at least one design criterion; and
generating, based on the problem specification, a plurality of candidate material designs that include the set of material attributes, wherein each candidate material design includes in the plurality of candidate material designs produces the simulated material from two or more pre-existing materials.

4. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 3 , wherein generating the plurality of candidate material designs comprises:
identifying, within a database and based on the problem specification, a first design approach included in the one or more design approaches that includes a procedure for generating the custom material geometry for the first candidate material design included in the plurality of candidate material designs; and
performing a topology generation procedure included in the first design approach to generate the custom material geometry.

5. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the first candidate material design includes a set of commands for causing the manufacturing machine to combine a first material and a second material to fabricate the custom material geometry.

6. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 5 , wherein displaying the custom material geometry comprises:
displaying a first lattice composed of the first material; and
displaying a second lattice interleaved with the first lattice and composed of the second material.

7. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 5 , wherein displaying the custom material geometry comprises:
displaying a first layer composed of the first material and having a first thickness; and
displaying a second layer disposed on the first layer and composed of the second material and having a second thickness.

8. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 5 , wherein displaying the custom material geometry comprises:
displaying the first material that comprises a first metal, and
displaying the second material that comprises a second metal,
wherein the custom material comprises a custom metal alloy.

9. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein:
the first candidate material design includes a set of commands for causing the manufacturing machine to generate an array of unit cell instances within the custom material geometry, and
at least two unit cell instances in the array of unit cell instances have different geometries and are composed of different materials.

10. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the custom material is associated with a first set of material attributes that is different than combinations of material attributes associated with either of the two or more pre-existing materials.

11. A computer-implemented method for fabricating a custom material, the method comprising:
determining, based on applying one or more design approaches to a design problem described in a problem specification, a set of material attributes that satisfies at least one design criterion associated with a design problem;
generating a plurality of candidate material designs that have the set of material attributes, wherein a first candidate material design in the plurality of candidate material designs includes a custom material formed from two or more pre-existing materials;
selecting the first candidate material design from the plurality of candidate material designs;
generating instructions for fabricating the custom material from two or more pre-existing materials; and
displaying, via a graphical user interface (GUI), a design space that includes:
one or more components of the design problem, and
a custom material geometry representing a repeatable pattern of the custom material, wherein the custom material geometry includes component geometries for each of the two or more pre-existing materials that combine to form the custom material; and

causing, based on the material design, a manufacturing machine to fabricate the custom material from the two or more pre-existing materials by fabricating the custom material geometry.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , further comprising generating the problem specification by:
synthesizing the custom material geometry; and
identifying the at least one design criterion that includes at least one of a design objective, a design constraint, or a boundary condition associated with the design problem.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein generating the set of candidate material designs comprises:
identifying a set of material attributes associated with a simulated material that satisfies the at least one design criterion; and
generating, based on the problem specification, a plurality of candidate material designs that include the set of material attributes, wherein each candidate material design includes in the plurality of candidate material designs produces the simulated material from two or more pre-existing materials.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 , wherein generating the plurality of candidate material designs comprises:
identifying, within a database and based on the problem specification, a first design approach included in the one or more design approaches that includes a procedure for generating the custom material geometry for the first candidate material design includ

Assignees

• Autodesk Inc

Inventors

• Davis Mark Thomas
• Bergin Michael

Classifications

• G05B2219/32089

  Action and material and technology combined to manufacture product · CPC title

• G06F3/04847

  Interaction techniques to control parameter settings, e.g. interaction with sliders or dials · CPC title

• G05B2219/35021

  Identify object characteristics, elasticity, density, hardness and select material · CPC title

• G06F30/00

  Computer-aided design [CAD] · CPC title

• Y02P80/40

  Minimising material used in manufacturing processes · CPC title