Foundations for a Systems-Based Approach for Materials Design

Abstract

Establishing systems-based materials design methods is an important step towards enabling rapid, concurrent design of materials and products with the potential for significant technological innovations. Materials design involves tailoring material structures and processing paths to achieve properties and performance levels that are customized for a particular application. It is a complex, non-deterministic, multi-scale, multifunctional activity that requires multiple collaborating designers and distributed, heterogeneous computing resources. Accordingly, a systems-based design approach is required with which to manage information flows, embed performance-property-structure-processing relations, interrogate models, explore variability, and engage collaborative decision-support protocols. In this paper, we discuss some of the intellectual and computing foundations of our systemsbased approach for materials design. It has three primary facets: (1) a decision support framework for modeling and supporting a complex, collaborative design process, (2) robust design methods for modeling uncertainty and managing or minimizing its impact on design specifications, and (3) a computational infrastructure for integrating and sharing heterogeneous information and computing and software resources. Some of the key aspects of our approach are illustrated via design of multifunctional cellular materials for a structural heat exchanger application.

Development and Application of a Flexibility-Based Method for Multi-Scale Design

“…The solutions are to be communicated to the system-level designer who will choose a solution that meets her goals as closely as possible. The materials level objectives are to minimize the volume of material in the liner, V liner , with a target of 0.25 m 3 and to maximize the combustion temperature, T 4 , with a target of 2200 K. These objectives are conflicting in nature. The materials designer assigns different weights to each of the objectives so that a Pareto set of solutions can be generated.…”

“…In this case, the system-level designer fixes the values for D o , p 3 , p 4 , and -coupled parameters that depend on aspects of the system that are not designed in the present example. The values are recorded in Table 1.…”

“…In order to calculate thrust for a particular cellular material solution, the system design team must know the highest temperature, T 4 , that the combustor liner can withstand, the inner diameter of the liner (D i ), and the temperature of the cooling air when it exits the liner (T lo ). Thrust also depends on the outer diameter of the combustor liner, D o , which is fixed by the system designer to satisfy geometric constrains imposed by the rest of the system.…”

“…In the analysis, common variables such as pressure and temperature are identified by a subscript (e.g. T 4 ) which corresponds to the thermodynamic states labeled in Figure 7. A series of assumptions are made in building the model:…”

“…Materials design-the simultaneous design of a product and the materials from which it is made-is a primary example of multiscale design and an increasingly active area of research. [1][2][3][4][5] As illustrated in Figure 1, a multiscale design problem is typically decomposed vertically according to divisions of perspective that occur simultaneously over a range of disciplines and a range of hierarchical scales.…”