Design of Flexible Films Based on Kinked Carbon Nanofibers for High Rate and Stable Potassium-Ion Storage

With the emergence of wearable electronics,flexible energy storage materials have been extensively studied in recent years.However,most studies focus on improving the electrochemical properties,ignoring the flexible mechanism and structure design for flexible electrode materials with high rate capacities and long-time stability.In this study,porous,kinked,and entangled network structures are designed for highly flexible fiber films.Based on theoretical analysis and finite element simulation,the bending degree of the porous structure(30%porosity)increased by 192%at the micro-level.An appropriate increase in kinking degree at the meso-level and contact points in entanglement network at the macro-level are beneficial for the flexibility of fiber films.Therefore,a porous and entangled network of sulfur-/nitrogen-co-doped kinked carbon nanofibers(S/N-KCNFs)is synthesized.The nanofiber films synthesized from melamine as nitrogen sources and segmented vulcanization exhibited a porous,kinked,and entangled network structure,and the stretching degree increased several times.The flexible S/N-KCNFs anode delivered a higher rate performance of 270 mAh g−1 at a current density of 2000 mA g−1 and a higher capacity retention rate of 93.3%after 2000 cycles.Moreover,the foldable pouch cell assembled by potassium-ion hybrid supercapacitor operated safely at large-angle bending and showed long-time stability of 88%capacity retention after 4000 cycles.This study provides a new idea and strategy for the flexible structure design of high-performance potassium-ion storage materials.

Design methods of rhombic tensegrity structures

As a special type of novel flexible structures, tensegrity holds promise for many potential applications in such fields as materials science, biomechanics, civil and aerospace engineering. Rhombic systems are an important class of tensegrity structures, in which each bar constitutes the longest diagonal of a rhombus of four strings. In this paper, we address the design methods of rhombic structures based on the idea that many tensegrity structures can be constructed by assembling one-bar elementary cells. By analyzing the properties of rhombic cells, we first develop two novel schemes, namely, direct enumeration scheme and cell-substitution scheme. In addition, a facile and efficient method is presented to integrate several rhombic systems into a larger tensegrity structure. To illustrate the applications of these methods, some novel rhombic tensegrity structures are constructed.

Flexible Design Methods of Urban Waterfront Areas

Waterfront area is always a central district in a city, and favorable designs improve taste of the city. With the further urbanization and improvement of living standards, design of waterfront area has to meet not only needs of water conservancy and flood control, but also psychological needs of users. Using flexible design principles and methods, urban waterfront areas will be more flexible and capable of adapting to changes of neighboring environment.

CONSTRUCTION AND MODIFICATION OF FLEXIBLE FEATURE-BASED MODELS

A new approach is proposed to generate flexible featrure based models (FFBM), which can be modified dynamically. BRep/CSFG/FRG hybrid scheme is used to describe FFBM, in which BRep explicitly defines the model, CSFG (Constructive solid feature geometry) tree records the feature based modelling procedure and FRG (Feature relation graph) reflects different knids of relationship among features. Topological operators with local retrievability are designed to implement feature addition, which is traced by topological operation list (TOL) in detail. As a result, FFBM can be modified directly in the system database. Related features' chain reactions and variable topologies are supported in design modification, after which the product information adhering on features will not be lost. Further, a feature can be modified as rapidly as it was added.

Crowdsourcing intelligent design

Design intelligence,namely,artificial intelligence to solve creative problems and produce creative ideas,has improved rapidly with the new generation artificial intelligence.However,existing methods are more skillful in learning from data and have limitations in creating original ideas different from the training data.Crowdsourcing offers a promising method to produce creative designs by combining human inspiration and machines' computational ability.We propose a crowdsourcing intelligent design method called ‘flexible crowdsourcing design'.Design ideas produced through crowdsourcing design can be unreliable and inconsistent because they rely solely on selection among participants' submissions of ideas.In contrast,the flexible crowdsourcing design method employs a cultivation procedure that integrates the ideas from crowd participants and cultivates these ideas to improve design quality at the same time.We introduce a series of studies to show how flexible crowdsourcing design can produce original design ideas consistently.Specifically,we will describe the typical procedure of flexible crowdsourcing design,the refined crowdsourcing tasks,the factors that affect the idea development process,the method for calculating idea development potential,and two applications of the flexible crowdsourcing design method.Finally,it summarizes the design capabilities enabled by crowdsourcing intelligent design.This method enhances the performance of crowdsourcing design and supports the development of design intelligence.