Online Lecture by prof. Nele Moelans

Application of phase-field models in computer-aided design of multi-component alloys

Speaker: prof. Nele Moelans, Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Title:
Application of phase-field models in computer-aided design of multi-component alloys.

Abstract:
The interest in manipulating the properties of multi-component alloys is high today and phase-field models to simulate the evolution of microstructures have the capability to become an important tool in the computer-aided design of these multi-component alloys. Their advantage is that they can simulate the evolution of complex, multi-phase microstructures during phase transformations, deformation, and annealing, considering a wide range of phenomena, such as bulk and grain boundary diffusion, transformation strains, and anisotropy in bulk and interface properties.
However, there are still challenges in applying the phase-field method to multi-component alloys. Obtaining the model parameters as a function of composition is required to obtain quantitative results, but often complex and computationally expensive. Moreover, as the number of major elements in the alloy increases, the scope for alloy optimization also increases and the number of cases to be simulated increases exponentially with the number of elements. In addition, the number of phases and complexity of a microstructure is often larger when the number of components in the alloy increases.

In this presentation, I will first give an overview of the state-of-the-art in phase-field modeling for multi-component alloys. Next, I will discuss new methodologies recently developed in our group facilitating the application of phase-field models in multi-component alloy design.

This session was be chaired by prof. Joakim Odqvist (KTH).