About the project
Mechanical metamaterials are engineered structures with extraordinary properties driven by geometry, not composition. This PhD project will pioneer a multi-scale framework combining topology morphing and surrogate modeling to streamline design and enable defect engineering, unlocking real-world metamaterial applications in ultralight, reconfigurable, and high-performance materials.
Mechanical metamaterials are architected artificial materials, purposefully designed to possess unusual combination of mechanical properties not found in natural materials, such as ultralight weight, high energy absorption, and reconfigurability. These properties arise from their internal geometry rather than the material composition itself. Recent research has indicated that strategically introducing localized topological imperfections, or defects, in the metamaterial structures, can significantly enhance these properties. However, despite the aggressive advancement in recent years, the exploration of novel topologies is severely limited by the high computational cost of simulating complex geometries and the vast design space involved. Traditional design approaches rely heavily on human intuition and inspiration from nature or art, which, while creative, are not scalable or systematic.
This PhD project will seek to bridge this gap by developing an integrated, multi-scale framework to systematically address these challenges. This framework will introduce a topology morphing technique that can dramatically reduce the design complexity involved with topology optimization, as well as a novel multi-level surrogate modeling technique that can fuse information from cheaper small-scale structures with data from expensive large-scale structure simulations. This multi-scale framework would allow efficient defect engineering of large-scale metamaterial structures by significantly reducing the computational overhead that currently prohibits it. This research will unlock the potential of metamaterials in critical engineering applications—from aerospace to robotics—where performance, weight, and adaptability are paramount. The fusion of geometric innovation with computational efficiency will pave the way for next-generation material design.
You will be joining a collaborative group dedicated to addressing complex real-world engineering problems. The group is focused on conceptualizing cutting-edge data-driven topology and optimization methodologies. These techniques are specifically developed with the aim of solving real-world engineering challenges such as fluid structures, turbomachinery, meta-materials, etc.
The University of Southampton boasts extensive HPC and experimental facilities making this a unique opportunity to conduct high fidelity, multi-disciplinary research and collaborate with world-class researchers.
The School of Engineering is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.
