The Coming ICME Data Tsunami and What Can be Done

With the increased emphasis on reducing the cost and time to market of new materials the need for robust automated materials information management system(s) enabling sophisticated data mining tools is increasing, as evidenced by the emphasis on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and the recent establishment of the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI). Further, this need is also fueled by the demands for higher efficiency in material testing; consistency, quality and traceability of data; product design; engineering analysis; as well as control of access to proprietary or sensitive information. Further, the use of increasingly sophisticated nonlinear, anisotropic and/or multi-scale models requires both the processing of large volumes of test data and complex materials data necessary to establish processing-microstructure-property-performance relationships. Fortunately material information management systems have kept pace with the growing user demands and evolved to enable the: (i) capture of both point wise data and full spectrum of raw data curves, (ii) data management functions such as access, version, and quality controls; (iii) a wide range of data import, export and analysis capabilities; (iv) data “pedigree” traceability mechanisms; (v) data searching, reporting and viewing tools; and (vi) access to the information via a wide range of interfaces. This paper discusses key principles for the development of a robust materials information management system to enable the data mining of microstructure / property/ performance relationships critical to ICME. Furthermore NASA Glenn’s attempt at establishing such a database, for a model turbine disk Ni-based alloy (i.e., ME3) is articulated.