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Combining different features inspired by biological systems is necessary to obtain uncommon and unique multifunctional biologically inspired conceptual designs. The Expandable Domain Integrated Design (xDID) model is proposed to facilitate the multifunctional concept generation process. The xDID model extends the previously defined Domain Integrated Design (DID) method. The xDID model classifies biological features by their feature characteristics taken from various case-based bio-inspired design examples into their respective geometric designations called domains. The classified biological features are mapped to the respective plant and animal tissues from which they originate. Furthermore, the paper proposes a representation of the functions exhibited by the biological features at the embodiment level as a combination of the integrated structure (multiscale) and the structural strategy associated with the integrated structure. The xDID model is validated using three multifunctional bio-inspired design case studies at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal additive manufacturing (MAM) technology is now changing the pattern of the high-end manufacturing industry, among which MAM fabricated Ti6Al4V has been far the most extensively investigated material and attracts a lot of research interests. This work established a deep neural network (DNN) to investigate the grain boundary in competitive grain growth for a bi-crystal system, the column β grains of Ti6Al4V as an example. Because of the limited number of experimental samples, the DNN is trained based on the data coming from the Geometrical Limited criterion. A series of direct energy deposition experiment using Ti6Al4V is carried out under the Taguchi experimental design. The grain boundary angles between the column grains are measured in the experiment and used to evaluate the accuracy of DNN.