Integrated computational materials engineering

Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) is an approach to design products, the materials that comprise them, and their associated materials processing methods by linking materials models at multiple length scales. Key words are "Integrated", involving integrating models at multiple length scales, and "Engineering", signifying industrial utility. The focus is on the materials, i.e. understanding how processes produce material structures, how those structures give rise to material properties, and how to select materials for a given application. The key links are process-structures-properties-performance. The National Academies report describes the need for using multiscale materials modeling to capture the process-structures-properties-performance of a material.

A fundamental requirement to meet the ambitious ICME objective of designing materials for specific products resp. components is an integrative and interdisciplinary computational description of the history of the component starting from the sound initial condition of a homogeneous, isotropic and stress free melt resp. gas phase and continuing via subsequent processing steps and eventually ending in the description of failure onset under operational load.

Integrated Computational Materials Engineering is an approach to design products, the materials that comprise them, and their associated materials processing methods by linking materials models at multiple length scales. ICME thus naturally requires the combination of a variety of models and software tools. It is thus a common objective to build up a scientific network of stakeholders concentrating on boosting ICME into industrial application by defining a common communication standard for ICME relevant tools.

Efforts to generate a common language by standardizing and generalizing data formats for the exchange of simulation results represent a major mandatory step towards successful future applications of ICME. A future, structural framework for ICME comprising a variety of academic and/or commercial simulation tools operating on different scales and being modular interconnected by a common language in form of standardized data exchange will allow integrating different disciplines along the production chain, which by now have only scarcely interacted. This will substantially improve the understanding of individual processes by integrating the component history originating from preceding steps as the initial condition for the actual process. Eventually this will lead to optimized process and production scenarios and will allow effective tailoring of specific materials and component properties.

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