Heterogeneous Volume Modelling and 3D Printing
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Heterogeneous Volume Modelling and 3D Printing
Wed, 27/02/2013 - 15:30 to 16:30
Location:
Speaker:
Prof. Alexander Pasko
Affiliation:
Bournemouth University
Synopsis:
Natural objects are rarely homogeneous having a complicated internal structure, density and materials distribution. The common features of such heterogeneous objects are gradually distributed materials within the volume and presence of internal volumetric structures with size of details orders of magnitude smaller than the overall size of the object. These microstructures can be lattices, porous, branching or granular material compositions varying from regular to completely irregular random structures. Existing mesh- and voxel-based modeling methods encounter numerous difficulties when dealing with heterogeneous objects. An alternative approach called the Function Representation (FRep) is presented based on using real functions evaluated procedurally at any given point. This allows for modeling volume geometry, material distribution and multi-scale microstructures with dynamic variations in geometric and topological properties. It provides models ready for direct multi-material 3D printing with any available resolution of the machine without producing poor intermediate approximations. We illustrate this approach by several examples of heterogeneous models, microstructure generation, near real-time direct rendering and direct digital fabrication on 3D printers.
Biography:
Alexander Pasko is a professor at The National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University, UK. He received his PhD from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPI) in Russia in 1988, where he was a senior scientist until 1992. He was an assistant professor at the department of computer software, University of Aizu, Japan (from 1993 to 2000); associate and full professor at the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences of the Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan (2000-2007). Alexander's main research interest is the development of a high-level universal model for spatio-temporal objects and phenomena with their internal properties. The introduced model called the Function Representation (FRep) is based on the most universal mathematical language of real functions of point coordinates in geometric spaces. To practically support the mathematical concepts of this model, Alexander and his colleagues have introduced and develop a special-purpose modelling language called HyperFun (from Hyperdimensional Functions), which has extensive applications in education, design, computer animation, biology, digital fabrication, and other areas. The international R&D group HyperFun has published more than 120 papers in academic journals and conferences, and distributes its software under a special open source license.