Systems Approaches to Materials Design: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

There is increasing awareness of the imperative to accelerate materials discovery, design, development, and deployment. Materials design is essentially a goal-oriented activity that views the material as a complex system of interacting subsystems with models and experiments at multiple scales of materials structure hierarchy. The goal of materials design is effectively to invert quantitative relationships between process path, structure, and materials properties or responses to identify feasible materials. We first briefly discuss challenges in framing process-structure-property relationships for materials and the critical role of quantifying uncertainty and tracking its propagation through analysis and design. A case study exploiting inductive design of ultrahigh-performance concrete is briefly presented. We focus on important recent directions and key scientific challenges regarding the highly collaborative intersections of materials design with systems engineering, uncertainty quantification and management, optimization, and materials data science and informatics, which are essential to fueling continued progress in systems-based materials design.