Materials Design Over the Decades, How Far Have We Come?

Computational materials design methods have been in development since the 80's as computational tools, approaches and systems have emerged. Early examples were established within the Steel Research Group/Northwestern University, focused on steel alloys due to the comparative wealth of data and model development available, focused, in large part, on absolute performance enhancements over incumbent alloys. Through the last two decades of technical maturity, these methods are now being applied to more diverse systems, with designs additionally focused on lower cost, enhanced reliability and minimized process variation. An example of this is the ultra-high-strength, ultra-high toughness Ferrium M54 steel, designed, protoyped, scaled to commercial production and completed an AMS specification, in less than 4 years for the Navy by QuesTek Innovations LLC. Accelerated Insertion of Materials (AIM) techniques forecast probabilistic property minimums expected from manufacturing capabilities. Modeling capability is being applied to accelerate the implementation and qualification of M54 in flight critical components for aircraft.