Ph.D. student Simone Peter recently presented her research at the 16th World Congress on Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (WCSMO), held in Kobe, Japan, in May 2025. The biennial WCSMO, hosted by the International Society for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (ISSMO), is a prestigious international gathering that brings together researchers and practitioners at the forefront of computational design, optimization, and engineering innovation. Peter is part of the Professor Caitlin Mueller's Digital Structures group, and her presented research was also developed in collaboration with CEE Professor Josephine Carstensen. She is pursuing her PhD in the CEE CSE doctoral program.
Simone’s presentation focused on reducing the embodied carbon of concrete floor slabs, which are among the most material-intensive components in mid-rise buildings. Her work introduces a novel intermediate density topology optimization approach that determines efficient beam layouts in concrete slabs, optimizing material placement without requiring binary material choices or complex additive manufacturing techniques. By modeling slabs using membrane and shell finite elements, Peter's method captures both out-of-plane and in-plane behaviors, enabling more realistic and practical structural solutions. Her findings highlight the trade-offs between mesh granularity, manufacturability, and computational efficiency and lay the groundwork for more sustainable slab systems and pointing toward future exploration in nonlinear concrete modeling and applications in other structural materials.
