The Challenge for Materials Design

Abstract

The principal axiom of materials science and engineering asserts that material behavior, as measured by properties and performance, depends on structure and processing. It is now generally recognized that the application of this fundamental truth to the rational design of materials has emerged as one of the most challenging technical problems currently facing our industrial society. While the use of simulation and modeling in the computational part of the design process has reduced the product cycle from years to months by reducing the need for costly prototyping and serial experimentation, the development of new materials and processes remains an empirical endeavor guided by intuition with little quantitative scientific input. The reduction of product cycle time, increases in the agility of manufacturing processes and development of optimal materials for engineering applications depend on advances in our ability to generate reliable quantitative models of materials and processes that can be coupled with design codes. Although increases in computing power will aid this process, the most important developments will come in the development of a hierarchy of interoperable, physics-based models of material structure and properties that permit computation to reduce the lengthy experimentation currently required to produce reliable material data bases. This is the challenge to the next generation of mechanists and materials scientists and engineers.