Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems

The research objective of this award is to develop a computational design tool for multilevel optimization of hierarchical product-material systems under uncertainty. Through systematic decomposition of computational material models, microstructure-property relationships can be tailored to satisfy competing system-level design goals such as performance, reliability, and robustness. A consistent top-down cascading of requirements and bottom-up propagation of capabilities and uncertainties that span length scales ranging from nano-to-micro, micro-to-meso, and meso-to-macro is desired. Development of advanced metamodels for approximation of cause-effect relationships will enhance the efficiency of the design tool while addressing key optimization concerns related to highly nonlinear and noisy responses. Cyberinfrastructure will be used to integrate the components into a comprehensive tool, effectively forming a virtual organization for multidisciplinary research. The effectiveness of the design tool will be evaluated by investigating a number of benchmark problems.