Thrust Area 5: Packing Of Soft Deformable Objects

Packing Of Soft Deformable Objects

Principal Investigator
Georges Fadel (Clemson U.)

Industry
Peter Fenyes, Stacey Gu (General Motors)
Nancy Wang (Ford Motor Co.)

Government
Mark Feury, Mike Letherwood, Mark Brudnak (TARDEC)

Student
Santosh Tiwari (Clemson U.)

Previously, we have developed the capability to pack compactly non-convex objects inside a non-convex enclosure, and established a process to pack objects subject to multiple criteria such as vehicle dynamics, accessibility, survivability, etc. Also, we have an approach to packaging with evolving shapes using a bi-level Analytical Target Cascading (ATC) formulation of the overall design problem where the system level corresponds to the configuration design of the system with fixed objects and the component level corresponds to the shape design of several components. Thus many aspects of packaging have been dealt with. There remains quite a few problems to solve. This is one of them.

The objective of this project is to develop a technique to compactly pack soft deformable objects of arbitrary (non-convex) shape within a specified volume of arbitrary shape.

This can help the army better deal with the logistics of packing artifacts inside tight spaces and enable Army suppliers to better design systems taking into account the geometrical placement of components. We want to continue developing the toolset that the Army can use, and broaden its applicability.