Microstructure-sensitive design of a compliant beam (Q5944520)

The authors describe a new approach called here microstructure-sensitivity design (MSD), and illustrated by a compliant fixed-guided beam. A polycrystalline beam microstructure is composed of basic elements that belong to the material set. The set of all pertinent microstructures is found to be the convex hull of the material set, and thus is named the material hull. The optimal placement of iso-property surfaces within the material hull determines the optimal set of microstructures for the original problem. Extensions of MSD to more complex problems are also described.