In order to create a virtual model of a material such as steel, and to simulate its behaviour, engineers first perform experimental tests.
Damian Gorczany
Models to date have described forming processes without considering the material's microstructure. Such models have to be laboriously fed with parameters for each material. The team from the research network "Materials Chain" at UA Ruhr has developed a new model designed to change this. Funded by the Mercator Research Center Ruhr, the project is a collaboration between Prof. Dr. Alexander Hartmaier from the Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Materials Simulation in Bochum, Prof. Dr. Jörg Schröder from the Institute of Mechanics in Duisburg-Essen and Prof. Dr. Erman Tekkaya from the Institute of Forming Technology and Lightweight Components in Dortmund.
The researchers study materials such as steel on a scale of a few millimetres. Steel is not evenly textured but composed of grains of different sizes. These grains may also differ in terms of their crystalline structure. The researchers first analyse the microstructure of a material experimentally and then create a virtual representation of the microstructure on the computer. Based on the virtual microstructure, the model can predict how the material will behave when the material is subjected to forces when compressed or pulled apart, for example. When simulating forming processes, the engineers pay particular attention to how the material deforms in different spatial directions, and where the material springs back. Depending on which side lateral pressure is applied to the crystalline structure, the material will deform more or less strongly.
The engineers are aiming to reverse this model by creating a suitable material with a specific application in mind. Once the material's required properties have been identified, it should therefore be possible to predict the microstructure required to obtain these properties. A detailed article on this project can be found in the science magazine Rubin of Ruhr University Bochum.