Abstract
Innovations in digital manufacturing, including additive manufacturing, have made it possible to realize increasingly complex structural architectures using both conventional and new base materials. Although the fabrication possibilities have greatly improved across scales, there are still manufacturing limitations and fabrication characteristics that introduce imperfections. Topology optimization is a computational design method that has emerged as a powerful tool for designers to explore new possibilities and achieve previously unattainable performance levels. This talk will focus on new topology optimization methods that improve the manufacturability and resulting physical performance of the designed architectures. Three different strategies will be discussed where the manufacturing considerations are integrated as the design is generated by (i) mimicking the manufacturing process, (ii) explicitly constraining fabrication limitations, and (iii) using active human-in-the-loop experience to guide the design.
Biography
Josephine Carstensen is the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development (Associate) Professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). She leads the Carstensen Group, where her work spans from developing computational design frameworks for various structural types, scales, and design scenarios to experimental investigations that are used to inform necessary algorithmic considerations. Dr. Carstensen has received awards for both research and teaching, including the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Maseeh Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Ole Madsen Mentoring Award. She joined the MIT CEE faculty in 2019 after two years as a lecturer at MIT, jointly appointed in CEE and Architecture. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2017 and holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. from the Technical University of Denmark.