Optimal design and manufacture of variable stiffness laminated continuous fiber reinforced composites.

Advanced manufacturing methods like multi-material additive manufacturing are enabling realization of multiscale materials with intricate spatially varying microstructures and thus, material properties. This blurs the boundary between material and structure, paving the way to lighter, stiffer, and stronger structures. Taking advantage of these tunable multiscale materials warrants development of novel design methods that effectively marry the concepts of material and structure.

Simultaneous Digital Design and Additive Manufacture of Structures and Materials.

The integration of emerging technologies into a complete digital thread promises to disrupt design and manufacturing workflows throughout the value chain to enable efficiency and productivity transformation, while unlocking completely new design freedom. A particularly appealing aspect involves the simultaneous design and manufacture of the macroscale structural topology and material microstructure of a product. Here we demonstrate such a workflow that digitally integrates: design automation - conception and automation of a design problem based on multiscale topology optimization; material compilation - computational geometry algorithms that create spatially-variable, physically-realizable multimaterial microstructures; and digital fabrication - fabrication of multiscale optimized components via voxel-based additive manufacturing with material jetting of multiple photo-curable polymers.

Rigid Origami via Optical Programming and Deferred Self-Folding of a Two-Stage Photopolymer.

We demonstrate the formation of shape-programmed, glassy origami structures using a single-layer photopolymer with two mechanically distinct phases. The latent origami pattern consisting of rigid, high cross-link density panels and flexible, low cross-link density creases is fabricated using a series of photomask exposures. Strong optical absorption of the polymer formulation creates depth-wise gradients in the cross-link density of the creases, enforcing directed folding which enables programming of both mountain and valley folds within the same sheet.