Integral materials modelling

This special issue of Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering contains (on pages S1-S58) select manuscripts from the 2nd International Symposium on Integral Materials Modelling, which was held in Aachen, Germany on 11 September, 2002. The symposium was again dedicated to the rapidly emerging field of modelling and simulation in materials science and engineering. It was organised by the collaborative research center (SFB 370) `Integral Materials Modelling' of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which is concerned with the through process modelling of materials from the liquid phase to the final product. The main concern of through process modelling is the evolution and change of microstructure during processing, which seriously affects material properties. Microstructural modelling and simulation is, therefore, a key issue of the programme. The evolution of microstructure is path dependent and can, therefore, only be accounted for by internal state variables, which are defined on an atomistic or microscopic level rather than by macroscopic quantities. Thus, physical models rather than empirical relations are required to obtain predictive strength for variable processing conditions or changing material chemistry. On the other hand engineering applications require modelling approaches that can be managed in a reasonable timeframe, economically and within the computing power available. These seemingly contradicting requirements can be reconciled by multiscale modelling where microscopic models are implemented into macroscopic codes, e.g. cellular automaton into finite element codes. Improved accuracy and reliability of prediction of engineering properties is the final benchmark of modelling quality. Thus, besides advanced mathematical models and simulation tools, accurate and relevant experimental data are indispensable for successful modelling. This symposium presented a cross section of the state of the art of materials modelling. Invited external contributions as well as reports on modelling activities within the SFB 370 comprised an interesting scientific programme that was accompanied by lively discussions. This symposium was the second of its kind. The first workshop was mainly dedicated to the modelling of specific processing steps. The focus of this symposium was the coupling of scale-bridging models along the processing chain. We hope the reader will enjoy these papers which capture the fascination of this rapidly emerging field of materials science.