Automated Toolbox Principle for CAD Design of Bionic Structures
An ambitious endeavor that is now producing the first results: To create bionically optimized components, CENIT is developing a CATIA-based CAD catalogue of parametrically defined bionic features. “This provides an automated toolbox to support the cost- and time-intensive manual interpretation and design of topologically optimized components in CAD”, says Jochen Michael, Senior Consultant at CENIT, in explaining the objective. “The parametrization of features also lets the designers adjust geometries more easily. That gives us an additional efficiency and quality boost during the design process”.
By the end of the Bionic Aircraft project in August 2019, CENIT expects to have developed a CAD catalogue containing about 10 to 15 bionic features. “The declared goal of the project is to show how such a catalogue can be implemented in methodological and practical terms. That places the focus on fundamental research. It has to provide a basis for defining how bionic features can be harnessed to guide topological optimization, and what algorithms are best suited to component recognition and allocation of features”, explains CENIT’s Jochen Michael. With this research, the project partners are breaking new ground – to date, no CAD program contains bionically optimized features.
For expertise on the nature, suitability and functionality of the bionic features which CENIT is integrating into CAD, the project is relying on experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Production Technologies, IAPT. Based on analyses on qualitative characteristics, uses and benefits of topology-based components, they develop the respective bionically optimized features. The aim is to improve the typical behavior of components in everyday use, and to make them as lightweight and stable as possible. An example of how even minor adjustments can achieve a significant effect: The risk of component failure can be significantly reduced if components subject to tension loads are designed with fillets which replicate models found in nature. Thus, such a feature will be included in the CAD catalogue as a parametric model.
After programming the first bionic features in CAD, CENIT will take on the next project milestone: Feature recognition. This is a software tool that analyzes a topologically optimized component and allocates it – if possible, fully automatically – to a functionally equivalent bionic feature contained in the CAD catalogue. This capability makes feature recognition an important element in the design of bionic ALM components.