A wide class of high-performance materials, including solid-solid composites, porous solids, foams, biological materials, and additively manufactured materials, have complex microstructures, which play a dominant role in determining their properties and performance. This multidisciplinary project will harness recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) to establish a novel design and discovery cycle for complex materials that will dramatically accelerate material innovations. This project will create new methodologies through which human materials scientists and AI will collaborate to discover optimal microstructural designs of such complex materials for targeted properties and performance. 

There are enormous opportunities and needs for innovating next-generation materials through performance-driven design and optimization of microstructures. The AI-driven design framework in this Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) project will pioneer these opportunities through fundamental breakthroughs in AI for the design and machine learning of complex physical processes and will have a high impact on the materials research community. The success of this project will lead to an AI-driven material microstructure design framework, resulting in significant speedup in the discovery process of complex materials, as well as reducing the cost and labor required for material innovation by saving unnecessary “cut-and-try” experiments. The AI-driven design framework will be easily scalable and applicable to a broad range of complex materials, which will benefit the design and manufacturing of functional materials, polymers, composites, biomaterials, etc. By providing an accelerated discovery cycle and reduced costs, the design framework will benefit the US industry and, thereby, contribute to the safety, national security, and technological advancement of society. As such, this project will significantly accelerate and advance the discovery and development of materials with desirable properties and functionality, which aligns with the vision of the DMREF program. This project will benefit from collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) with respect to the manufacturing process of energetic materials and the testing and validation of design outputs of the AI framework against experimental results. Student training and workforce development will be enhanced through opportunities provided through AFRL.