GOALI: Microstructure-Sensitive Design of Multiphase Structural Alloys

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This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project combines material microstructure-level modeling and simulation with materials processing, characterization and recent advances in materials property measurement protocols and data analytics to realize more rapid search, evaluation and design exploration of alpha-beta titanium alloys for next generation aerospace structures. The work focuses on three underdeveloped technologies necessary to achieve this goal: (i) protocols for three-dimensional microstructure data acquisition, statistical analyses, compression, and reconstruction, (ii) estimates of elastic stiffness, minimum strength, fatigue and fracture properties as a function of the salient features in real or virtual microstructures, and (iii) more accurate grain/phase scale models, including effects of grain and phase boundaries. This is the first simulation-supported materials design study involving multiple property objectives for alpha-beta titanium alloy systems with a substantial range of microstructure morphologies. This project adds (i) the Materials Knowledge System extension to polycrystal and polyphase plasticity to achieve rapid design exploration, (ii) coupling in situ arrays of spherical nanoindentation with crystal plasticity models of individual phases and interface regions to develop more physically based crystal plasticity models for the individual phases and interface slip transfer, and (iii) pursuing the Inductive Design Exploration Method as a means of guiding the strategy for parametric simulations to explore the design space for conflicting material property goals.The benefits of this work include bringing modeling and simulation-informed design of new and improved materials from the supercomputing to the desktop computing environment, thereby enabling a practical engineering approach to design exploration of a potentially large set of microstructures to address desired multiple property targets. The future workforce relevant to the Materials Genome Initiative will benefit through the graduate students receiving direct support, undergraduate research experiences, and incorporation of results into materials modeling and design courses at Georgia Tech, the nation's largest engineering program. Based on this foundational research, it is expected that Boeing will incorporate relevant elements into its engineering analysis and design practice given the important role of the dual phase alpha-beta Ti structural alloy system in the aerospace industry.