A novel PCA-based microstructure descriptor for heterogeneous material design

A novel PCA (Principal Component Analysis)-based microstructure descriptor is proposed for heterogeneous material design given a database of material microstructures. The PCA-based descriptor captures the important geometric features of the database, and provides a compact representation of the design space. Based on the PCA-based descriptor, a polynomial expression is ultimately derived that links the microstructures in the design space with their associated physical performances. Compared with previous approaches using first-order or second-order descriptors, the novel approach integrates PCA and Combined Approximation (CA) in mechanics, provides more precise presentation of the microstructure and accelerates the optimization and reconstruction of the result microstructure. The performance of the proposed approach is also tested in various aspects for a linear elasticity analysis problem.

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