Optimal shape design in biomimetics based on homogenization and adaptivity

Optimal shape design of microstructured materials has recently attracted a great deal of attention in materials science. The shape and the topology of the microstructure have a significant impact on the macroscopic properties. The paper is devoted to the shape optimization of new biomorphic microcellular silicon carbide ceramics produced from natural wood by biotemplating. This is a novel technology in the field of biomimetics which features a material synthesis from biologically grown materials into ceramic composites by fast high-temperature processing. We are interested in finding the best material-and-shape combination in order to achieve the optimal prespecified performance of the composite material. The computation of the effective material properties is carried out using the homogenization method. Adaptive mesh-refinement technique based on the computation of recovered stresses is applied in the microstructure to find the homogenized elasticity coefficients. Numerical results show the reliability of the implemented a posteriori error estimators.