Announcement Detail

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

1:00 PM CST

Join via Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87331120699?pwd=MExkQ085ZHh1aDc3ZnBwQzFlUHI4UT09

Large Scale Structural Systems and Optimal Design Industrial Colloquium

Design Optimization for Mechanical Logic Gates

Speaker

Kenny Swartz, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Abstract

The need to compute in harsh environments has inspired the field of mechanical digital logic, i.e. logic gates that operate mechanically rather than using electricity. Mechanical logic gates mimic the behaviors of traditional logic gates through complex motion. For example, an “and” gate would have two inputs actuators and require they both be displaced to turn the gate “on”, i.e. displace an output feature. Similarly, an “or” gate would displace the output feature if either of the two inputs are actuated. An additional benefit to mechanical computing is the ability to store information for long periods of time without relying on external power sources. In fact, the information is stored through elastic deformation of materials rather than, e.g. batteries.

Mechanical digital logic offers an exciting new application for topology and shape optimization. Indeed, the design of logic gates requires simulation of complex mechanics, e.g. nonlinearity, buckling, and bistability, to design non-intuitive structures. Here, we first apply topology optimization to design logic mechanisms from scratch that meet our design requirements. Then, we apply shape optimization to a conformal mesh of the topology optimized design to further refine the material boundary and more accurately predict the response; this allows much more precise control over stress in the optimized design. Topology and subsequent shape optimization of 2D and 3D logic gates is demonstrated here with particular emphasis on the robustness of the nonlinear mechanics solver, the optimization formulation required to produce the desired logic gate behavior, and the workflow from design requirements to final optimized design.

Bio

Dr. Swartz received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2021, specializing in design optimization of micro-architected materials. Upon completion of graduate school, he joined the Computational Engineering Division (CED) as a computational optimization engineer. His current research includes topology optimization, shape optimization, and design for additive manufacturing. He is closely involved with the development of the Livermore Design Optimization (LiDO) software library.