{"id":131213,"date":"2022-10-21T12:32:25","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T16:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=131213"},"modified":"2022-11-10T15:15:56","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:15:56","slug":"getting-tough-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2022\/10\/21\/getting-tough-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Tough Fast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brown lab combines machine learning and mechanics to speed up discovery of impact-resistant materials<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Designing materials for impact protection\u2014think military helmets or a car\u2019s crumple zone\u2014is arduous and expensive. Engineers can\u2019t simply model the impacts on a computer; they must physically subject the candidate materials to crashes.<\/p>\n

But Associate Professor Keith Brown<\/a> (ME<\/a>, MSE<\/a>, Physics<\/a>) has figured out how to combine additive manufacturing with robotics and machine learning to test thousands of combinations of materials and designs with unprecedented speed\u2014and no large-scale destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past year, our lab discovered a host of structured materials that were highly efficient in terms of absorbing mechanical energy, as the result of over 10,000 experiments,\u201d says Brown. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about big numbers\u2014numbers it would be totally impractical if not impossible to reach without an automated system.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just one example of the advances in materials discovery that Brown and colleagues have shown are possible. The team published their findings in a recent paper in Matter <\/em><\/a>and presented them at the first-ever Accelerate conference in Toronto, where Brown received a travel award.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen nature builds materials and structures, it makes these exquisitely complicated things,\u201d says Brown. \u201cOur goal is to figure out ways to learn how to create similarly intricate structures that have really highly tuned and tailored properties for things like impact protection and mechanical performance\u2014things that are hard to simulate.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, to catch up to nature, which has had \u201cthe benefit of hundreds of millions of years of evolution,\u201d Brown says, \u201cwe build robots that do these experiments for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the first key component: Brown\u2019s BEAR system, short for Bayesian experimental autonomous researcher. The engineers enter parameters into the system\u2014say, properties of strength or toughness. The autonomous system rapidly designs one structure after another and, with a robotic arm and several 3D printers, manufactures samples.<\/p>\n

Next, the researchers subject each sample to quasi-static compression. This is a kind of leaner stand-in for an impact test. Ultimately, once they find the sample structure\u2014for example, a lattice\u2014that meets the criteria, they can manufacture multiple copies of that lattice and knit these into a material with the desired toughness. \u201cIt\u2019s like a box spring,\u201d says Brown, \u201cwhere you have a series of components arranged in a way that allows you to absorb energy effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Combining quasi-static and impact tests, the researchers trained a model that accurately predicted the impact performance in novel lattices. The results proved how relatively simple data, obtained without full-size samples or complex measurements, can be used to accomplish bigger goals in materials discovery.<\/p>\n

Along with his students Aldair Gongora (ENG\u201921) and Kelsey Snapp (ENG\u201925), Brown\u2019s collaborators on the Matter <\/em>study included Maysarah K. Sukkar Professor of Engineering Design and Innovation Elise Morgan<\/a> (ME, MSE, BME<\/a>) and Emily Whiting<\/a>, an associate professor of computer science in the BU College of Arts & Sciences. The team\u2019s work is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brown lab combines machine learning and mechanics to speed up discovery of impact-resistant materials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21311,"featured_media":131214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,909,908],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133259,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131213\/revisions\/133259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}