committee

The development of computer power and simulation methods has brought enormous progress in the last decades. Today, the development of simulation models takes place on all time or length scales and a wide range of simulation tools is available. Currently, many of these software solutions operate at a level in their respective fields that allows for valuable, and therefore value-added, contributions to modern design tasks in knowledge-based production and product models.

However, the complex interplay between atomistic processes, thermodynamics, process conditions, microstructure development, material and component properties from product creation to recycling can only be described by combining different methodological and simulation tools within an "Integrated Computational Materials Engineering" (ICME) approach. A special requirement for future solutions is therefore the modularly configurable combination of different tools from different suppliers on simulation platforms instead of monolithic solutions.

The vision of the Working Group Simulation Platforms and Interoperability is (i) the establishment of a nationwide material simulation infrastructure in the form of a user-friendly simulation network and (ii) the standardization of the digital material or component description by semantic technologies as a basis for seamless information exchange or interoperability between different computer simulations but also between simulation and experiment or analytics over the entire life cycle.
The strategy to achieve these goals is based on the use of open and freely available simulation platforms and workflow managers such as the AixViPMaP for continuum models at the microstructure scale, or the platform approaches Aiida, SimPhony, pyiron, simstack, MODENA. Future MetaPlatforms, as developed in the European MarketPlace and VIMMP projects and the German innovation platform MaterialDigital, will get a broad foundation. Platforms that are currently already available will be presented by the Working Group in workshops and evaluated by participants. In a further step, individual platforms will be installed internally by interested institutions and used and evaluated with their own software tools. In a further step, individual installations can be networked with each other via the Internet, taking into account data protection guidelines. Some of the above platforms already offer the functionalities required for such networking.
Interoperability between different simulation tools - but also between simulation and experiment (analysis data, etc.) - is to be ensured by a standardized material description based on semantic technologies. The starting point for this is the freely available "European Materials & Modelling Ontology" (EMMO).
The Working Group's vision is to make the exchange and processing of material parameters as simple and intelligent as the current exchange of image and video files.
Such a simplified exchange of digitized materials data and information will enable (i) much better networking of the materials community in all its special disciplines, (ii) significant improvements in teaching and training, and (iii) a significant increase in the speed of innovation in the materials manufacturing and processing industry.