The German Research Foundation (DFG) is setting up eleven new six-year priority programs, which are due to start in 2025. These include the "DaMic - Data-driven alloy and microstructure design of sustainable metallic engineering materials" program. The DaMic coordinator is Prof. Markus Kästner, Chair of Numerical and Experimental Solid Mechanics at TU Dresden.
It is imperative that the metallic materials of the future become more sustainable, as their production and processing currently cause 40% of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The extraction of the associated minerals also produces several billion tons of by-products every year, some of which are harmful. DaMic aims to lay the essential scientific foundations for this development and contribute to the establishment of a new field of research at the interface of digitalization and sustainability.
In the form of materials with a reduced number of chemical alloying elements and alloys with a high tolerance to impurities from the use of secondary raw materials, two fundamental options for improving recyclability and sustainability are the focus of the investigations.
In both cases, negative effects of the modified alloy compositions are to be compensated for by a targeted design of the microstructure of the material so that the mechanical properties are comparable with currently available construction materials.
Ten sub-projects are expected to be selected in a competitive process from proposals received throughout Germany for interdisciplinary tandem projects by experts from the fields of mechanics and materials science and bundled in DaMic.
