Engineering Aspects of Materials Modeling

Engineers are forced to develop processes and products in a set time frame. Thus, they have to provide quantitative and reliable predictions despite incomplete knowledge on the underlying physics. In the past, empirical equations or phenomenological models were used, but this required time consuming validation and expensive pilot plant tests for each material or any change of the processing window. The trend to shorter product life cycles and an increasing market pressure to reduce costs demand new tools for an assessment and prediction of material properties for a wide range of processing conditions without complete validation. To meet these requirements computer simulations have been employed recently. Respective codes have to accommodate multiscale information, from atomistics to a macroscopic scale and generate an output on an engineering level. This so called ‘integral materials modeling’ will be presented for the example of aluminum sheet processing.