Evolution in Industrial Design

by Marisa Morby

I was listening to a podcast with Denny Royal on biomimicry and heard about an industrial design method called the "Soft Kill Option". It's actually a method that's been used for decades, but not something that I'd ever heard about, so I decided to do a bit of a dive and learn more.

design, nature, reimagine

In industrial design an option called the soft kill option method exists to optimize the structure of design. Bones remove material where it's not needed so that they're as light as possible while still being able to hold weight. The image below shows the spongy bone layer, which is where unnecessary material has been removed, but the strength of the bone remains intact.

Trees distribute stress uniformly by adding wood to points of greatest mechanical load.

Image from Structure Distributes Stress at Asknature.org

"In 1992, Claus Mattheck at the Karsruhe Research Centre in Germany published a paper proposing a means of simulating the manner in which nature optimizes structure. Starting with an initial conditions defining object shape and material, support points and forces are then applied to the object. Over the course of multiple evolutions... this method removes elements that are under little or no strain until the remaining material left is under load. Termed “Soft Kill Option” by Mattheck, this method of using FEA to optimize a given shape is more generally referred to as Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) and has been used in several industries over the last twenty years."

The best explanation I could find into why it was named "soft kill option" was because voids are replaced with a weak material instead of being removed completely. This structure can lead to a lighter, stiffer, and more sustainable product. I personally prefer the term Evolutionary Structural Optimization.

Evolutionary Structural Optimization (or Soft Kill Option) has been used by Opel, a car company in Germany, for a couple of decades. "An Opel engine mount designed using the software is 25 percent lighter yet 60 percent more stable than one designed using the conventional design process." This design method made their cars 30% lighter overall.

There's also ESO furniture by Joris Laarman, which is a really beautiful combination of taking inspiration from nature and reimagining it into a beautiful design. I think Evolutionary Structural Optimization is a perfect example of how we can learn from nature to improve our own built objects, and you can see a few of them below!

Furniture by Joris Laarman using Evolutionary Structural Optimization (or Soft Kill Optimization)

Cargo scooter by Bauhaus Art + Design Cloud using Evolutionary Structural Optimization (Soft Kill Optimization)

A small 3D rendering of Proto House, a design that uses Evolutionary Structural Optimization or Soft Kill Optimization to create an optimized and lightweight structure.