Distinguished Seminar: Multiscale Multiphysics Design Optimization (M2DO) via Level Set Topology Optimization

H Alicia Kim, Ph.D.

Jacobs Scholar Chair Professor
Structural Engineering Department
University of California, San Diego

Friday, Sept. 27, 3:00 pm
Sidney & Marian Green Classroom (3550 MEK)

Free & Open to the Public

Abstract: Topology optimization is able to provide unintuitive and innovative design solutions and a performance improvement (e.g. weight savings) in excess of 50% is not uncommonly demonstrated in a wide range of engineering design problems. With the rise of advance materials and additive manufacturing, topology optimization is attracting much attention in the recent years. This presentation will introduce topology optimization in structural design, fiber composites and architected material. It will also include more recent advances topology optimization, multiscale design optimization breaking down the barrier between material and structural designs. Another direction of interests in large-scale topology optimization using the latest sparse data structures tailored to novel level set method. We have demonstrated an order of magnitude improvements on both the memory footage and the computation time. These efforts represent a pathway to applying topology optimization for complex multiphysics multifunctional structures, which may be too complex to rely on designers’ intuition.

Bio: Dr H Alicia Kim is Jacobs Scholar Chair Professor in the Structural Engineering Department of the University of California, San Diego and also holds Personal Chair at Cardiff University in the UK. She leads the Multiscale Multiphysics Design Optimization (M2DO) lab. Her interests are in level set topology optimization, multiscale and multiphysics optimization, modeling and optimization of composite materials and multifunctional structures. She has published over 200 journal and conference papers in these fields including award winning papers at the AIAA conferences and World Congresses on Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. She is a prestigious EPSRC Fellow for Growth. Her research in topology optimization began in the 90’s at the University of Sydney, Australia where she developed one of the first boundary based topology optimization methods. She continued her research at the University of Warwick and the University of Bath, UK for 15 years before moving to the current position in 2015.