Researchers develop user-friendly interface for creating complex material designs

Researchers from MIT and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria have developed a computational technique that makes it easier for a user to quickly design a metamaterial cell from any of those smaller building blocks, and then evaluate the resulting metamaterial’s properties.The method, similar to a CAD system, allows users to quickly model complex metamaterials and artificial structures with complex geometries that determine their mechanical properties and explore other potential shapes. It is challenging for engineers to know what material will yield the desired results due to the infinite amount of arrangements possible. As a result, only a fraction of usable metamaterials are explored.  Procedural Metamaterials: A Unified Procedural Graph for Metamaterial Design via Liane Makatura (Youtube). Project authors: Authors: Liane Makatura*, Bohan Wang*, Yi-Lu Chen, Bolei Deng, Chris Wojtan, Bernd Bickel, and Wojciech Matusik The researchers from MIT and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria found that metamaterials can be represented as a graph structure that can be altered by applying various parameters until a suitable design is reached. Throughout the process, designers can preview their structure at any point. Going forward, the researchers...