March 5-15, 2007 SAINT SHORT COURSE on
Nanoscale Materials Design and Its Fusion with Products Design and Manufacturing
Wing Kam Liu, Walter P. Murphy Professor
Director of NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials
Northwestern University, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois, 60208, USA
Email: w-liu@northwestern.edu, (http://www.tam.northwestern.edu/wkl/liu.html)
Modern technological society is increasingly concerned with high performance materials,
and in achieving good efficiency in energy conversion, communications, computation, and
chemical processing. Nanotechnology, nanomechanics and nanomaterials have an overall
potential for the betterment of our society, for example in national defense, homeland security
and private industry. These fields can make our manufacturing technologies and infrastructure
more sustainable in terms of reduced energy usage and environmental pollution. In the last
decade, various aspects of nanotechnology have been actively investigated to achieve specific
goals in materials, medicine, electronics, and energy production. By dexterous manipulation of
molecules, innovative concepts of materials and devices have been proposed and developed.
Such molecular manufacturing requires rigorous understanding of the fundamental science
underlying molecular structures and its application towards the artificial manipulation of
molecules in order to achieve specific functions with high efficiency. Upon the completion of
such functional materials at the molecular level, the interface from the nanoscale to micro- and
macro- scale will be realized to transition these novel nanomaterials to a real marketplace.
To inspire and speed up the coalescence of fundamental and application-specific
functional nanomaterial development, we will also present the next generation of ComputerAided Design (CAD) simulation theories and software development that will integrate the
influence of the mentioned nano and micro structures of these functional materials into CAD
software for design and manufacturing of products. We propose an alternative concurrent
bridging scale theory for the next generation of CAD software. In particular, we wish to extend
the current FEM software to incorporate the “concurrent” multi-physics of these functional
materials into a single unified simulation. These are fundamentally necessary to account for the
multiple scale behavior observed in materials design. The need to develop these multiscale
modeling approaches for understanding and characterizing such systems has become apparent:
the so-called multiresolution thermal-mechanical-electrical mechanics, which fuses the
“mechanics of these functional materials” into multiscale continuum finite element methods,
provides a promising avenue to parallel treatment of events on two or more time- and distancescales. We propose to develop this approach, starting from the Angstrom scale and moving
upward to the continuum scale by melting Quantum Mechanics, Molecular Dynamics, Monte
Carlo and Kinetic Monte Carlo, phase fields and Finite Element methodologies into a coherent
modeling and simulation protocol. We will then present a multiresolution cohesive zone model
for finite temperature crack growth and fracture-strength (hardness) design of Cybersteel 2020
and Digital 3-Dimensions (D3D) for naval ships, and design methodologies for the next
generation of alloys and cutting and drilling tools for use in aero and auto applications. Its
applications to Microsystems, fuel cells, and nanostructures self-assembly will be highlighted.
Vita: Dr. Wing Kam Liu, Walter P. Murphy Professor at Northwestern University and Director
of NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials, received his Ph.D. from Caltech.
His research activities include bridging scale computational mechanics and materials, multi-scale
analysis, and computational biology. Selected Liu's honors include the Gustus L. Larson
Memorial Award, the Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal and the Melville Medal, all from ASME; the
Thomas J. Jaeger Prize by the International Association for Structural Mechanics in Reactor
Technology; the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award; the Computational Structural
Mechanics Award and Computational Mechanics Award from USACM and IACM, respectively;
and the JSME Computational Mechanics Award. Liu serves on both the executive committee of
the ASME applied mechanics division (Chair 2005-2006) and the International Association for
Computational Mechanics. He will be awarded the John von Neumann Medal, the highest
award given by USACM, in San Francisco, July 2007. He was the past president of USACM.
Liu is cited by Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited, influential
researchers in Engineering, and an original member, highly cited researchers database. He is the
editor and honorary editors of many Journals. Dr. Liu has acted as a consultant to the many
organizations.
Tentative outline (the first 6 of 12 lectures to be delivered in March 2007)
Lecture 1: An overview of Nanoscale Materials Design and its Fusion with Products Design and
Manufacturing via aero and auto applications.
Lecture 2: Brief introduction to basic concepts in materials science; materials design and life
cycle product design, in particular, materials issues related to strength, hardness, and toughness.
Lecture 3: Inclusions and voids; and nano/micro structure-properties relation; virtual multiscale
life cycle nano and microstructural materials design theories.
Lecture 4: Multiscale Continuum Theories for Materials Design and its fusion with Products
Design and Manufacturing.
Lecture 5: Hierarchical and concurrent homogenization; direct numerical simulations (DNS);
multiscale statistical gradient methods and its finite element formulations.
Lecture 6: Microstructure based multiscale predictive modeling of materials performance and its
applications to metal forming.