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Computational design of mechanical metamaterials

Nature Computational Science volume 4, pages 574–583 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

In the past few years, design of mechanical metamaterials has been empowered by computational tools that have allowed the community to overcome limitations of human intuition. By leveraging efficient optimization algorithms and computational physics models, it is now possible to explore vast design spaces, achieving new material functionalities with unprecedented performance. Here, we present our viewpoint on the state of the art of computational metamaterials design, discussing recent advances in topology optimization and machine learning design with respect to challenges in additive manufacturing.

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Fig. 1: Metamaterials generated by continuous optimization.
Fig. 2: Flexible metamaterials obtained through discrete optimization.
Fig. 3: Example of using ML for the design of MM for different purposes.

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Acknowledgements

S.H. acknowledges support from the FRASCAL graduate school (German Research Foundation (DFG); 377472739/GRK 2423/2-2023) and the DFG (grant Za 171 14/1) during the early stages of the work. S.H. also acknowledges support from the Humboldt Foundation through the Feodor Lynen fellowship during the later stages of the work. S.B. was partially supported by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under (grant 857470) and from the European Regional Development Fund under the programme of the Foundation for Polish Science International Research Agenda PLUS (grant MAB PLUS/2018/8). R.G. was supported by the PRIN 2022 project TRIEL. S.Z. was supported by the PRIN 2022 project METACTOR. M.Z. and S.Z. also acknowledge support from DFG (Za 171 9/3). R.Z. was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education Universities and Research through PON Ricerca e Innovazione 2014–2020 (DM 1061, 10 August 2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Complexity and Biosystems, Department of Physics ‘Aldo Pontremoli’, University of Milan, Milano, Italy

    Silvia Bonfanti, Stefan Hiemer, Raja Zulkarnain, Roberto Guerra & Stefano Zapperi

  2. NOMATEN Centre of Excellence, National Center for Nuclear Research, Swierk/Otwock, Poland

    Silvia Bonfanti

  3. Institute of Materials Simulation, Department of Materials Science Science and Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Fürth, Germany

    Stefan Hiemer & Michael Zaiser

  4. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Chimica della Materia Condensata e di Tecnologie per l’Energia, Milano, Italy

    Stefan Hiemer & Stefano Zapperi

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  1. Silvia Bonfanti
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Contributions

S.B., S.H., R.Z., R.G., M.Z. and S.Z. performed the literature review, assembled the figures and wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Michael Zaiser or Stefano Zapperi.

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Competing interests

S.B., R.G. and S.Z. have filed a patent application through the University of Milan related to the present work (application number: 102019000021618). The patent concerns a design method for mechanical actuators. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Bonfanti, S., Hiemer, S., Zulkarnain, R. et al. Computational design of mechanical metamaterials. Nat Comput Sci 4, 574–583 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00672-x

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