Systematic design of compliant morphing structures: a phase-field approach

Abstract

We investigate the systematic design of compliant morphing structures composed of materials reacting to an external stimulus. We add a perimeter penalty term to ensure existence of solutions. We propose a phase-field approximation of this sharp interface problem, prove its convergence as the regularization length approaches 0 and present an efficient numerical implementation. We illustrate the strengths of our approach through a series of numerical examples.