| Scope |
Most industrial applications such as aerospace, automobile, biomedical and defense areas need materials that must operate in increasingly extreme and complex environments. As no single existing alloy can meet all the requirements of a system component, the successful design and processing of a gradual change in composition and microstructure, thus properties, over the whole material is gaining considerable attention in the materials science and engineering society. In concept, functionally graded materials (FGMs) are attractive. In practice, FGMs are often susceptible to processing defects linked to prohibitively time-consuming, empirical process development without the ability to predictively determine and/or rapidly screen experimentally viable pathways (composition and process parameters) to optimize their production. Due to these limitations, the actual performance of FGMs relative to conventionally joined parts remains to be validated and optimized. This symposium focuses on all aspects of the science and technology that will enable controlling microstructure and properties of graded materials, from thermodynamic, kinetic, property, and microstructure evolution simulations to rapid processing, in situ characterization, and understanding of defect formation.
Specific topics include, but are not limited to:
• Development and demonstration of computational-experimental platforms to produce viable graded components ready for various types of advanced testing
• Development of new graded materials for targeted applications (i.e., optimize specific properties)
• Computational prediction of optimal material gradients with minimal processing defects such as porosity
• Development of processing and characterization methods for rapid FGM optimization
• Understanding of solidification, phase stability, and phase transformation in FGMs |