Chapter 2 - Critical Path Issues in Materials Design

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to review the existing efforts related to materials design. Concurrent design of materials and products is a compelling, transformative technology for 21st-century competitiveness. It also serves as an interdisciplinary platform for instruction of new generations of materials scientists and engineers. Product design and materials development are not mutually exclusive and independent activities but synergistic components of an integrated product, process, and materials design endeavor. This challenge involves a philosophical and cultural shift toward inductive, goal-oriented synthesis of products and their constituent materials and processing paths, and for this, a systems-based strategy is essential. With an emphasis on the limitations of current capabilities and the associated research and development opportunities, the chapter outlines several critical path issues, such as adequate models and experimental data on different length and time scales for a diverse set of functions that material systems must deliver; techniques for characterizing and managing uncertainty in material models applied to processing paths and structure–property relations, as well as resulting design specifications; tools for linking diverse modeling and simulation tools and methods and related data across length and time scales, functional domains, and material classes; and systems design methods and tools that bridge or integrate the design of materials, manufacturing processes, and products/components.