Afrl-rx-wp-tp-2010-4157 Digital Representation of Materials Grain Structure (preprint)

Recent initiatives to accelerate the insertion of materials and link the materials design and systems design processes have called for the advancement of microstructure-property relationships. In order to achieve these goals, the development of digital microstructure models in conjunction with computational methods for simulating material response is a necessity. There have been significant advancements in the collection and representation of microstructure, which coupled with computational power increases, has yielded microstructure models with increasing complexity and accuracy. It is the emphasis of this chapter to discuss the state-ofthe-art methods and current limitations in the field of microstructure representation. Specific focus will be paid to the areas of: experimental data collection, feature identification, mesh generation, quantitative characterization and synthetic structure generation. In presenting the status of the field, the key links to other fields that must be developed will also be addressed wherever possible.