Review of the Synergies Between Computational Modeling and Experimental Characterization of Materials Across Length Scales

TL;DR

This review explores the integration of computational modeling and experimental characterization across multiple length scales in materials science, highlighting recent advances, applications, and open challenges in multiscale materials research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent trends in combining predictive modeling with experiments to understand structure-property relationships in materials.

Findings

Computational models are increasingly used as discovery tools in materials engineering.

Experimental data significantly enhance multiscale modeling accuracy.

Several application areas demonstrate successful integration of experiments and modeling.

Abstract

With the increasing interplay between experimental and computational approaches at multiple length scales, new research directions are emerging in materials science and computational mechanics. Such cooperative interactions find many applications in the development, characterization and design of complex material systems. This manuscript provides a broad and comprehensive overview of recent trends where predictive modeling capabilities are developed in conjunction with experiments and advanced characterization to gain a greater insight into structure-properties relationships and study various physical phenomena and mechanisms. The focus of this review is on the intersections of multiscale materials experiments and modeling relevant to the materials mechanics community. After a general discussion on the perspective from various communities, the article focuses on the latest experimental and theoretical opportunities. Emphasis is given to the role of experiments in multiscale models, including insights into how computations can be used as discovery tools for materials engineering, rather than to "simply" support experimental work. This is illustrated by examples from several application areas on structural materials. This manuscript ends with a discussion on some problems and open scientific questions that are being explored in order to advance this relatively new field of research.