In an insightful video interview recorded in August 2024, ToffeeX CEO Marco Pietropaoli sat down with Jousef Murad to discuss the evolution of ToffeeX, our groundbreaking generative design platform that’s transforming design for manufacturing (DFM). Marco discusses how ToffeeX is leading the future of design innovation for energy efficiency, electrification, carbon capture, and hydrogen technologies across sectors like aerospace, automotive, energy, and electronics. Let’s look at some of the key takeaways in this article.
Bridging academia and industry to transform design
Marco Pietropaoli’s passion for mathematics began in a small village near Rome, Italy, which led him to London, where he pursued a PhD at Imperial College, focusing on the intersection of applied mathematics and aerospace engineering. It was here that the foundation of ToffeeX was laid.
By 2015, additive manufacturing (AM), especially metal AM, was beginning to gain traction in industries like aerospace. Siemens’ 3D-printed turbine blade marked a breakthrough in additive manufacturing, but existing design software couldn’t fully harness the potential of this new technology. This gap prompted Marco and his PhD supervisor, Francesco Montomoli, to explore how designs could be fully optimized to take advantage of AM technology.
With a mission to solve fundamental questions such as “What is the best design for a gas turbine coolant system?” or “What is the best design for battery heat management that fully utilizes 3D printing?” ToffeeX emerged as a spin-out from Imperial College, focusing on optimization driven by physical laws.
Working with industry to create a revolutionary tool
The journey from academic research to a market-ready product is rarely smooth, and Marco Pietropaoli shares in this video interview the struggles of taking ToffeeX from a technology to a fully-fledged product that engineers find helpful. One key difference was understanding what the market needed versus what academic research had focused on. Collaborating closely with industry partners helped bridge this gap.
Before officially launching ToffeeX, Marco and his team worked with several companies to apply their technology to real-world problems, such as optimizing the internal coolant channels of gas turbines. These early collaborations helped shape ToffeeX into a product that addressed industry pain points. With the support of investors and a dedicated team, ToffeeX evolved into a user-friendly platform.
Expanding beyond additive manufacturing to unlock new possibilities
Initially, ToffeeX focused on optimizing designs specifically for additive manufacturing (AM). However, the team quickly realized that conventional manufacturing techniques—like stamping, molding, and machining—still dominated most industries, and AM adoption was slow.
Therefore, ToffeeX evolved to support both conventional and additive manufacturing techniques to meet market demand. This versatility allows ToffeeX to cater to a wide range of industries, from automotive and aerospace to energy and medical devices.
ToffeeX’s mission now is to accelerate R&D cycles, enabling engineers to explore innovative designs faster and with greater confidence across multiple manufacturing processes.
The vision of ToffeeX is to provide a tool to the user to accelerate the R&D and innovation cycles massively. We are bringing the customer much farther and faster to innovative designs suitable for any manufacturing technique.
Solving the manufacturability problem with ToffeeX
One of the biggest challenges in generative design is manufacturability. Engineers are often presented with designs that look impressive in theory but are not feasible to produce. Marco acknowledges that many generative design tools struggle with this issue. ToffeeX sets itself apart by balancing optimal performance and practical manufacturability.
ToffeeX allows users to input specific manufacturing constraints, whether designing for additive manufacturing, stamping, or CNC machining. This means that the software produces the most efficient design and ensures that the design is feasible to manufacture using the chosen process.
By focusing on manufacturability, ToffeeX ensures that the designs engineers produce can move almost seamlessly from the virtual environment to actual production.
How ToffeeX supercharges the design process with unmatched speed
A standout feature of ToffeeX is its ability to reduce design time dramatically. Traditional design cycles can take weeks or even months, requiring multiple iterations and adjustments. ToffeeX condenses this timeline to just a few hours, allowing engineers to quickly iterate through different design options and arrive at an optimal solution.
By accelerating the design process, ToffeeX enables companies to bring products to market faster, making it an invaluable tool in industries where time-to-market is critical.
Redefining system-level optimization for the future of engineering
Marco emphasizes that this speed doesn’t just lead to faster results—it transforms the entire design process. Engineers can now focus on exploring trade-offs and can even optimize whole systems in ways that would have been too time-consuming in the past.
Traditionally, engineers have focused on optimizing individual components of a system. However, ToffeeX takes a more holistic approach by allowing system-level optimization. This allows engineers to optimize the performance of an entire system, such as fluid flow in a heat management system, without needing to redesign each individual component.
This capability is particularly valuable in industries like aerospace, where the interaction between components can make or break a system’s performance. By optimizing upstream and downstream components, engineers can achieve significant performance improvements. This approach also helps industries meet broader goals, such as reducing emissions and improving energy efficiency.
I firmly believe that embracing system-level optimization approach allows us to address more complex issues effectively, paving the way for significant advancements in areas like net zero, decarbonization and energy transition.
Empowering engineers with ToffeeX by enhancing the design process
Marco emphasizes that understanding the psychology of the user was crucial in shaping ToffeeX. Engineers wanted to remain in control of the design process, and ToffeeX was developed to enhance their input rather than replace it.
A key concern of engineers with new tools is whether they have been designed to replace their roles. Marco is clear: ToffeeX is not designed to replace engineers. Instead, it augments their capabilities. Engineers are still at the heart of the design process, continuing to use tools like CAD and simulation software. ToffeeX fits into this workflow (between the CAD and simulation software) by speeding up the design cycle and providing more efficient, manufacturable solutions.
By positioning ToffeeX as an enhancement to existing workflows rather than a disruptive tool, the company has reduced resistance to adoption. ToffeeX is designed to complement the tools engineers already use, helping them work faster and smarter.
The benefits are clear: faster innovation, more sustainable designs, and the ability to meet market demands with less time and resources. ToffeeX provides a path to more efficient and environmentally friendly solutions in sustainability-related industries.
Creating tailored design solutions with multi-objective optimization
A key differentiator for ToffeeX is its ability to handle multi-objective optimization. Engineers can set multiple goals—such as maximizing thermal efficiency, minimizing cost, or optimizing manufacturability—and ToffeeX will generate designs that balance these objectives.
You can also optimize more than one fluid simultaneously. This is particularly useful in complex engineering challenges, such as designing fluid-to-fluid heat exchangers. ToffeeX allows engineers to optimize for both performance and compactness, creating intricate designs that maximize efficiency while remaining manufacturable.
By providing flexibility in design objectives, ToffeeX empowers engineers to explore a broader range of possibilities, ensuring that the final design best fits both performance and production requirements.
How AI is shaping the future of generative design at ToffeeX
Marco explains that while ToffeeX is primarily driven by physics-based simulations, it also integrates artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its design capabilities. This hybrid approach allows engineers to leverage the best of both worlds: the precision of physics-based models and the adaptability of AI.
For example, AI can refine specific aspects of a design that may not be fully captured by physical models alone. This combination ensures that ToffeeX delivers accurate, optimized designs while incorporating real-world data to improve performance.
Marco Pietropaoli discusses problems yet to be solved
Looking ahead, Marco sees several opportunities for ToffeeX to continue evolving. Looking at the broader landscape—spanning design workflows, manufacturing processes, and CAD systems—there are still many gaps, leaving room for innovation from us and others in the industry.
Some key challenges remain unsolved.
First, creating a complex design is only part of the equation; effectively manipulating that design is just as crucial. This requires improving the digitalization of files, ensuring they are lightweight and easy to work with in different environments.
Second, while high-fidelity simulations are critical, they also need enhancement. Digitalization is a growing trend, and the goal is to simulate as much as possible before physical experimentation. However, as designs become more complex, the demands on simulations increase. This opens up a significant opportunity to leverage data-driven simulations that enhance the user’s experience and make the design process more seamless and powerful.
Conclusion
This interview with Marco Pietropaoli offers a deep dive into how ToffeeX is shaping the future of engineering design. As the conversation shows, ToffeeX is more than software—it’s a tool redefining how engineers approach design in thermal management systems for aerospace, energy, and beyond! We hope you enjoyed this interview. For more content like this, please follow our YouTube channel.
Thank you to Jousef Murad from The Deep Dive Podcast for inviting Marco to discuss ToffeeX in detail!
