The aim of this Gordon Conference, to be held at the Proctor Academy, Andover, NH, August 2 to 7, 2009, is to explore recent progress in the use of computational materials models to unify the science and engineering of metallic materials. An essential part of the discussion at this meeting is to form a new and potentially transformational discipline within the materials profession. It is called Integrated Computational Materials Science and Engineering (ICMSE). The topic of a 2008 US National Academy Study and a number of government and industry sponsored R&D programs, ICMSE involves the development and utilization of materials models that capture fundamental insights and quantitative processing-structure-property relationships for use by the engineering community. Key advances in quantification of processing-microstructure and microstructure-property relationships of advanced structural alloys and thermal barrier coatings will be highlighted. Advanced computational techniques such as those linking ab-initio calculations to phase equilibria and microstructure will be covered. Experimental activities are central to the development of quantitative processing-structure-property relationships and new experimental characterization tools will also be a focus. An aim of this conference is to foster a deep discussion advancing our understanding of the current capability and challenges for vertical integration of this knowledge and its application in aerospace, automotive, power generation and other industries. The participants represent universities, industries and national laboratories.
This conference is designed to benefit those on the forefront of development and application of computational materials models in industry, as well as those involved at the leading edge of computational and experimental materials science. There has been a significant effort involved in coupling computational methods with experiment to capture accurate mechanistic details and provide independent validation of predictions, at scale, and also integrating across length scales. The current quest is to develop the integration of these various approaches such that the insertion of a material in a given component may be optimized prior to its actual manufacture. The 2009 Gordon Research Conference on Physical Metallurgy will focus on the development of ICMSE for metallic materials. It will make a marked contribution to the establishment of a new discipline with significant, and broad, impact on industrial competitiveness and national security. However, many of the computational and experimental approaches and schemes for integration developed for these metallic materials will be useful for other materials types, often with only minor modifications. It is clear that establishing ICMSE as a new discipline will have an extremely broad impact. The provisional program includes 30 invited speakers and discussion leaders with 5 of these speakers from Europe or Australia and the remainder from the US. Additionally, it is expected that approximately 40 promising graduate students or postdoctoral fellows will be supported and 10% of the participants are expected to benefit from NSF support.
