What do the Apple watch and the Raptor engine of the SpaceX Starship have in common? Both are made in part of advanced materials developed over only a few years—as opposed to the usual decades, with the help of computers in a field pioneered at MIT. Now eight MIT professors, including one of the inventors of computational materials design, aim to make the field even more powerful thanks to a five-year USD 7.2 million grant from the Office of Naval Research.MIT team is working toward creating better cybersteels, or those that are designed with a computer. Key to the work is the incorporation of fundamental atomic-level data about steel. The goal is to use the MGI database to discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast and at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional methods. The MIT researchers will focus their efforts on steel, because it’s still the material the world has studied the longest resulting in the deepest fundamental understanding of its properties. Those fundamental properties are key to a growing steel database that governs everything from chemical compositions to the sequence of process temperatures to design new high-performance steels.Another major area of study involves the boundaries between the microscopic grains that make up steel. While the bulk thermodynamics of steel are well established, researchers need to make progress on the thermodynamics of interfaces, the grain boundaries. Cybersteels can have a variety of applications including steels manufactured by 3D printing that are changing how naval aircraft components are made. Olson’s materials design company, QuesTek, has already used the computational design technology to take cybersteels to flight qualification in naval aviation components. The tailhook of the Navy's carrier-based T45 plane was made with a cybersteel designed by QuesTek Innovations. In another example, the Office of Naval Research is interested in developing non-magnetic steels for ship hulls. The work is part of the next phase of the Materials Genome Initiative announced by former US President Mr Obama in 2011. The MGI is developing a fundamental database of the parameters that direct the assembly of the structures of materials, much like the Human Genome Project is a database that directs the assembly of the structures of life. The particular fundamental database structure for materials is known as Olson, together with Professor David M. Parks of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will work on incorporating simulations of steel toughening mechanisms early in the design process. Historically, simulations have been used in the late stages of design.
What do the Apple watch and the Raptor engine of the SpaceX Starship have in common? Both are made in part of advanced materials developed over only a few years—as opposed to the usual decades, with the help of computers in a field pioneered at MIT. Now eight MIT professors, including one of the inventors of computational materials design, aim to make the field even more powerful thanks to a five-year USD 7.2 million grant from the Office of Naval Research.MIT team is working toward creating better cybersteels, or those that are designed with a computer. Key to the work is the incorporation of fundamental atomic-level data about steel. The goal is to use the MGI database to discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast and at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional methods. The MIT researchers will focus their efforts on steel, because it’s still the material the world has studied the longest resulting in the deepest fundamental understanding of its properties. Those fundamental properties are key to a growing steel database that governs everything from chemical compositions to the sequence of process temperatures to design new high-performance steels.Another major area of study involves the boundaries between the microscopic grains that make up steel. While the bulk thermodynamics of steel are well established, researchers need to make progress on the thermodynamics of interfaces, the grain boundaries. Cybersteels can have a variety of applications including steels manufactured by 3D printing that are changing how naval aircraft components are made. Olson’s materials design company, QuesTek, has already used the computational design technology to take cybersteels to flight qualification in naval aviation components. The tailhook of the Navy's carrier-based T45 plane was made with a cybersteel designed by QuesTek Innovations. In another example, the Office of Naval Research is interested in developing non-magnetic steels for ship hulls. The work is part of the next phase of the Materials Genome Initiative announced by former US President Mr Obama in 2011. The MGI is developing a fundamental database of the parameters that direct the assembly of the structures of materials, much like the Human Genome Project is a database that directs the assembly of the structures of life. The particular fundamental database structure for materials is known as Olson, together with Professor David M. Parks of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will work on incorporating simulations of steel toughening mechanisms early in the design process. Historically, simulations have been used in the late stages of design.
