The cost of launching into space has dropped like stone in the last decade or two, but the cost of putting mass into orbit is still not cheap. As such, aerospace remains an industry where weight savings can justify nearly any cost.
In that sense, it’s a little strange that it took NASA this long to start using generative design in that area. Back in 2017, I wrote about a new button starting popping up in his Fusion360 CAD software from Autodesk. This button allows a human designer to roughly create the design of the part, get all the important measurements right, and tell the software the loads and stresses the part should withstand. , from which direction, and out of the software, start experimenting with how to get the job done with maximum efficiency.
The software initiates iterations, making changes a little at a time as random mutations try new combinations of the animal’s DNA and test it against desired performance goals. Just like life tests its DNA mutations. Over millions of generations, the software adds a little metal here, removes a bit there, and checks if the part is stronger or weaker, lighter or heavier than the previous one.
In a surprisingly short amount of time (hours if you have access to powerful cloud processing), it comes back in ways that humans could not have designed directly. But they are surprisingly similar to how nature works. Gradually thickens in areas of high stress to deal with. Where there is less stress, it will be thinner. Support structures tend to be wasted where they are not needed and line up along the load path. In short, they begin to look strangely bony and organic.
Henry Dennis / NASA
But they work. NASA research engineer Ryan McClelland says these “evolved structures” often do a much better job than the heavier human-designed parts. Human Design Stress Concentration. “
McClelland pioneered and championed the use of generative design at NASA, demonstrating that the weight of individual structural components can be reduced by as much as two-thirds.
This evolutionary AI technology finds its fullest expression when combined with additive manufacturing and 3D printing processes to allow us to design shapes that cannot be manufactured by traditional methods. stage.
But the process gets you to parts much faster than NASA’s typical design workflow.
“We can design, analyze, manufacture, and have prototype parts in as little as a week,” says McClelland.
Henry Dennis / NASA
These components are used in projects ranging from Mars sample return missions to space telescopes, space weather monitors, planetary instruments, balloon observatories, and more. The cross above is an example. This is the titanium scaffolding for the back of his EXCITE telescope, due to launch this year, connecting the carbon fiber plate that supports the main mirror to an IR receiver housed inside an aluminum cryogenic chamber.
Physicist Peter Nagler, working on the EXCITE project, said: “There is a combination of specific interfaces and tight load specifications, which proved to be a challenge for the designers…These materials have very different thermal expansion characteristics. I needed an interface between them so they wouldn’t.”
Organizations like NASA, where projects rarely share parts, have much more to gain from a custom, lightweight design than designing for high-volume, low-cost manufacturing. This technology is therefore very suitable.
“If you are a motorcycle or automobile company, you only have one chassis design to manufacture, and then you are going to build a lot of them. Here at NASA, we make thousands of custom parts every year. increase.”
McClelland is very keen to introduce additive manufacturing into the process. This could speed things up even further and further reduce the weight and cost of these types of bespoke parts. It also unlocks the ability to print complex moving parts. Not to mention the idea of printing parts in space.
“These technologies could enable NASA and commercial partners to build larger components in orbit that would not fit on a standard rocket,” McLelland said. “We might even be able to use materials found on the Moon and Mars to facilitate construction on the Moon and Mars.”
Source: NASA
