PREFACE

Process, structure, property, and performance are the key elements in materials science and engineering, and any types of modellings can be regarded as links relating among them. Building a chain of links among them and predicting performance should be helpful and would be crucial for accelerating the R&D of new innovative materials. Based on this guiding principle, a new concept named Materials Integration (MI) was proposed in the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) “Structural Materials for Innovation” led by Professor Teruo Kishi in the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan.

The concept of MI is designed to predict the performance from the process linking through the four elements by taking full advantage of computational material science, experiments, database, data science with phenomenological theories and empirical rules accumulated in materials science and engineering. Along the concept, a system has been developed in which computational modules are connected to solve the multi-scale and/or multi-physics problems; and a sequential combination of connected modules is called a workflow in the project. Users can predict performance from process by using a proper workflow and reduce the number of experiments to some extent. For the proof-of-concept, the project sets the four targets of performances such as fatigue, creep, brittle fracture, and hydrogen embrittlement in the welded joints of steel and aluminum. However, the applicability of the MI system is not limited to those targets but is open for various kinds of materials issues when modules and workflows are prepared for them. We hope that many researchers will contribute to enriching the MI system through making their scientific outcomes reusable as modules or workflows.

This special issue is a bundle of contributions that are works following the MI concept. Most of them come from the above-mentioned project and some outcomes are registered as modules or workflows in the MI system, in which users can reuse them. In addition, experimental and analytical works are included since they are supposed to contribute to building the database or the model-based modules. It would be our great pleasure if this special issue would provide a flavor of the MI concept to potential contributors.

December 7, 2018

Guest Editors:

Y. Kagawa¹ and M. Demura²

¹Professor, Tokyo University of Technology, Tokyo 192-0982, Japan; Emeritus Professor, The University of Tokyo

²Deputy Director, MaDIS*, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba 305-0047, Japan

*Research and Services Division of Materials Data and Integrated System