CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Computational Acoustic Design for Digital Manufacturing

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The acoustic characteristics of objects are among the most important properties that influence or define their function. Thus, design for fabrication of objects with high-fidelity acoustic specifications is a widely desired engineering task. Currently, this design process remains slow and expensive, commonly requiring many trial-and-error iterations; as a consequence, an object's acoustic properties are often not optimized at all, as to do so would drastically increase the design's cost and time. The long and suboptimal design cycle further limits the use of new materials and the exploration of shape variations. This research aims to address this fundamental challenge by developing new numerical models that simulate and optimize acoustics. Project outcomes will include a suite of computational tools that design the geometric shape and structure of an object so as to realize its acoustic properties using novel fabrication methods such as additive manufacturing. These tools have the potential to improve the function of many of today's products, thereby shifting the current paradigm of visual design into computational audiovisual design. The new tools will be made available to a large population of expert designers, engineers, hobbyists, and students, thereby facilitating the design, manufacture and customization of musical instruments, mechanical structures, consumer products, and novel materials with unique acoustic properties. Additional broad impact will derive because students trained by this project will become skilled in developing, extending, and harnessing numerical algorithms and interactive design tools in a wide array of engineering design tasks. The investigators will seek participation from underrepresented groups at the doctoral, masters, and undergraduate levels. This project advances a complete pipeline of computational design for manufacturing objects with high-fidelity acoustic specifications. When provided with the desired acoustic properties of an object such as sound spectrum and frequency scattering profile, the pipeline will computationally design the object's geometric shape and structure to realize its acoustic properties using digital fabrication. The proposed methods will bridge the longstanding gap between parametric computer-aided design (CAD) models and discrete finite-element meshes, and will embrace automatic computational optimization of designed structures with the user in the loop. Thus, they will reshape today's acoustic design, shifting from its current "design then analysis" process to a "design with analysis" process. To this end, the research will address a number of fundamental research questions including: (1) accurate, efficient design-oriented simulation methods to predict sound properties of a given design; (2) automated optimization algorithms that translate desired acoustic properties to shape and material specifications; and (3) efficient computer aided design systems with intuitive, interactive user interfaces incorporating simulation codes. The approach will address all these aspects in an integrated interdisciplinary research plan, leveraging the expertise of both investigators in their respective fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.