ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | APRIL 2025 26 As parts become ever more challenging to manufacture, modeling has enabled quicker development with improved process understanding. Process modeling itself has undergone significant improvements, including moving away from experimentally measuring thermophysical properties to calculating those parameters using thermodynamic databases. The calculated properties eliminate the time, cost, and errors associated with characterizing materials such as nickel-base superalloys at high temperatures, and they also provide more information. solution and precipitation ranges, finding the temperatures and chemistries that favor formation of deleterious phases, calculating phase percentages during solidification, and determining subsequent cooling or heating cycles all become possible through modeling. Integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) has enabled these capabilities to be applied to the production floor. Figure 5 provides an example of a solidification model result that shows how temperatures evolve during the single crystal solidification process. Consider that all alloys have a specified composition range for each element. When the properties of an alloy are measured, only a single chemistry sample is tested. In contrast, when the properties are calculated using a large database, a range of compositions can be quickly examined to determine which elements have the greatest effect on the overall properties and solidification pathway. These databases are employed not only for solidification analysis but also for other metallurgical processes. For example, activities such as determining the best heat treatment Fig. 4 — Schematic shows a casting furnace used to produce directionally solidified and single crystal castings. Columnar grains are aligned with the direction of the thermal gradient in directionally solidified castings, whereas a single grain grows throughout the entire casting during the single crystal process. Fig. 5 — Model simulation assists with mold design and casting parameter selection to improve yields beginning with the first process design iteration. MEDAL FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH Boyd A. Mueller, FASM (right), vice president and general manager, Technology and Alloy Howmet Engine Products Business Unit, Howmet Aerospace, received ASM’s 2024 Medal for the Advancement of Research at IMAT 2024 from then ASM President Pradeep Goyal. Mueller’s citation was “for leadership in casting and metals processing tech- nology enabling world-leading component and system capabilities, and championing ICME development and adoption, and its application to industrial process design and control.” The award was established in 1943 to honor an executive in an organization that produces, fabricates, or uses metals and other materials. The recipient, over a period of years, shall have consistently sponsored research or development and by foresight and actions, will have helped substantially advance the arts and sciences related to materials science and engineering.
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