CHiMaD Materials Design

Last week I participated in the CHiMaD Materials Design Workshop held on NIST. Greg Olsen gave a keynote talk to kick things off, introducing to us the concept of System Design Charts, specifically focused for materials science and engineering and focusing on the paradigm of processing, structure, properties (and sometimes performance). The idea is such design charts enable one to target the important areas of interest to investigate and focus on, but also being able to communicate better on what one is investigating. This makes sense from an industrial standpoint when one needs to talk with shareholders or clients of a consulting firm, but can also be applied academia so that members within a research group can keep track of what each person is working on specifically, while still seeing the big picture.

To be honest, there is nothing special with the System Design Charts. It's simply just another tool that one can use to organize their thoughts and convey their ideas on where to go next. It's a strategic planning tool (like SWOT or anything else) to keep groups focused on the important parts of the big picture, rather than investigating small parts of interest.

First, one lays out all the processing steps in a sequential manner. The processing steps will influence the structure of the material. This may be the literal crystal structure (if we're talking about metals), but also things such as phases, precipitates, or features like twins. The lines that connect the processing boxes and structure boxes are two-way, such that processing will directly influence structure, but the resultant structure can also influence subsequent processing. Properties sit on the side other structure, and highlight what structures are connected to what properties the most, again as a two-way connection. Optional is putting performance on the other side of properties.

Designing the chart this way, one attempts to solve the problem in determining how to optimize the processing to influence the properties of most interest, where the monetary interest lies. There's nothing special about this, except that the structure column clears up the historic blackboxes that we tried to directly correlate properties to processing. From what I understood, therein lies the materials design by considering the actual structure of the material and the impact it plays on the properties. As a materials science major, this is all something one learns in a first-year class. Looking from a bigger picture though, the tool tells you where money can be made, which for a scientist may not sit right.

Alternatively, it was introduced to us that such a concept can be applied to any science, which was the goal of the workshop. This was my attempt at a Monte-Carlo grain growth scheme (no money to be made here =P):