On Attempting to Create a Virtual Laboratory for Application-Oriented Microstructural Optimization of Multi-Phase Materials

Physics-based and phenomenological crystal plasticity numerical simulations provide an opportunity to develop microstructurally informed models for multi-phase material. The Düsseldorf Advanced Material Simulation Kit (DAMASK) has been developed as a flexible tool for modeling and studying the several deformation mechanisms of such materials at the microscopic and macroscopic scales. In the recent past, several methodologies and techniques were developed for obtaining or constructing microstructural details and calibrating the physics-based model parameters for single-phase and multi-phase materials. Combining and standardizing the devised methods with an appropriate database can help establish a virtual laboratory to analyze the effect of microstructural attributes on the mechanical behavior of multi-phase materials. This article deals with the comprehensive background of the developed techniques and methods for the multi-phase materials class by the current research group. The combinations of different experimental and numerical techniques to validate results are explained along with the advantages and limitations. The ideas of combining the different available tools and the associated challenges are discussed. The article presents some recent work related to the phase parameters identification of the multi-phase materials and detailed insight into the obtained results.