Microstructure upscaling patent officially filed.

October 23, 2023

Today, I am proud to announce that the provisional patent that I have been working on with the DigitalRock and Abaqus teams at Dassault Systemes has officially been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office! This innovative approach to material homogenization allows for an effective characterization of heterogeneities within materials without losing the computational efficiency of a fully resolved model. Heterogeneities can play a crucial role in many different physical phenomena, such as in determining the extent of lithium dendrite growth in different regions of a battery or in improving transport capabilities. Outside of battery applications, it is widely known that material heterogeneities can drive fracture and damage in deforming materials. Characterizing these heterogeneities is often tedious if even possible with other methods, however, provided a sample of the material in question, this strategy can capture the effects of heterogeneity allowing for material optimization and increased model fidelity.

Of course, a material sample is not always available. To this end, I am planning to develop an additional modeling methodology to simulate the manufacturing process of battery materials. This workflow, and any other material manufacturing/fabrication simulation method, would allow for researchers and engineers to fully capture the heterogeneous character of nearly any material subject to a wide array of physical phenomena when paired with the patented methodology I developed. This would not have been possible without the guidance of Dr. Rafael Salazar Tio, and many others at Dassault. I am thrilled to have been a part of this process, and I am excited to keep innovating with DS throughout my Ph.D.

Given that I am not sure how much I am allowed to share in regards to this work, I have left things purposely vague. Information relating to the work is below, although I ‘m not sure if it is publicly available yet:

U.S. Provisional Application No.: 63/592,325

Title: Method for electrochemistry modeling of Li-ion Battery by upscaling from microstructure to continuum using a mesoscale, heterogeneous homogenization

Filing Date: October 23, 2023

-TJC