MetaLight · Development of a Physics-Informed, AI-driven Inverse-Design Framework for Multifunctional, Load-Bearing Acoustic Metamaterials

The EU is a world leader in the transport industry, facing the dual challenge of the Green Deal's decarbonization targets and a public health crisis from traffic noise, which contributes to 66,000 premature deaths annually. Advanced lightweight materials like aluminum alloys are critical for reducing emissions, but their high stiffness and low damping make them poor acoustic insulators. This creates a fundamental industrial deadlock: vehicles are either lightweight and noisy or quiet and heavy. A new class of materials that is simultaneously lightweight, strong, and quiet is therefore essential for the future of sustainable European transport.Acoustic metamaterials show promise, but their design is hampered by a critical challenge. Current design paradigms, which rely on intuition and slow, iterative simulations, have only produced structures that are either mechanically robust or acoustically effective, but never both. Investigating the vast and complex design space to discover novel material topologies that resolve this contradictory performance trade-off is a fundamental problem that remains unresolved.MetaLight will bring together a Fellow with expertise in computational mechanics and topology optimization, the host institution's leading academic know-how in predictive acoustics, and the associated partner’s world-leading expertise in metamaterial design. The project’s goal is to develop the next generation of multifunctional metamaterials for the European transport sector.MetaLight will resolve this industrial deadlock by establishing an AI-driven, physics-informed inverse-design framework. This will enable the automated discovery of novel structures that are simultaneously lightweight, strong, and quiet, boosting Europe to the forefront of the advanced materials and sustainable transport markets.