Machine-learning tool could help develop tougher materials
For engineers developing new materials or protective coatings, there are billions of different possibilities to sort through. Lab tests or even detailed computer simulations to determine their exact properties, such as toughness, can take hours, days, or more for each variation. Now, a new artificial intelligence-based approach developed at MIT could reduce that to a matter of milliseconds, making it practical to screen vast arrays of candidate materials. The system, which MIT researchers hope could be used to develop stronger protective coatings or structural materials — for example, to protect aircraft or spacecraft from impacts — is described in a paper in the journal Matter, by MIT postdoc Chi-Hua Yu, civil and environmental engineering professor and department head Markus J. Buehler, and Yu-Chuan Hsu at the National Taiwan University. The focus of this work was on predicting the way a material would break or fracture, by analyzing the propagation of cracks through...