Special Issue

Engineering steels are used for a wide range of applications in which their fatigue behavior is a crucial design factor. The fatigue properties depend on various influencing factors such as chemical composition, heat treatment, surface properties, load parameters, microstructure, and others. During product development, various material characterization and qualification experiments are mandatory. For a faster and more cost-efficient development, data driven methods (machine learning) promise to replace or to complement material testing by prediction of the fatigue strength. With an ontology-based, semantically-linked knowledge graph, representing the manufacturing history of the material, the influence of the parameters of the process chain on the resulting properties can be accounted for. Herein, it is shown how a fatigue database containing a wide range of materials is assembled from literature. After postprocessing and curation of the data, machine learning predictions of mechanical properties are discussed under multiple aspects. A domain ontology is defined, containing the relevant class definitions for the use case. After applying a data integration and mapping workflow, it is shown how the data can be systematically queried using knowledge graphs describing the manufacturing history of the materials.

A key aspect in the development of multilayer inductors is the magnetic permeability of the ferrite layers. Herein, the effects of different processing steps on the permeability of a NiCuZn ferrite are investigated. Dry-pressed, tape-cast, and cofired multilayer samples are analyzed. An automated data pipeline is applied to structure the acquired experimental data according to a domain ontology based on Platform MaterialDigital core ontology. Example queries to the ontology show how the determined process–property correlations are accessible to nonexperts and thus how suitable data for component design can be identified. It is demonstrated how the inductance of cofired multilayer inductors is reliably predicted by simulations if the appropriate input data corresponding to the manufacturing process is used.

Automated computational workflows are a powerful concept that can improve the usability and reproducibility of simulation and data processing approaches. Although used very successfully in bioinformatics, workflow environments in materials science are currently commonly applied in the field of atomistic simulations. This work showcases the integration of a discrete element method (DEM) simulation of powder pressing in the convenient SimStack workflow environment. For this purpose, a Workflow active Node (WaNo) was developed to generate input scripts for the DEM solver using LIGGGHTS Open Source Discrete Element Method Particle Simulation code. Combining different WaNos in the SimStack framework makes it possible to build workflows and loop over different simulation or evaluation conditions. The functionality of the workflows is explained, and the added user value is discussed. The procedure presented here is an example and template for many other simulation methods and issues in materials science and engineering.

Addressing a strategy for publishing open and digital research data, this paper presents the approach for streamlining and automating the process of storage and conversion of research data to those of semantically queryable data on the web. As the use case for demonstrating and evaluating the digitalization process, the primary datasets from Low-Cycle Fatigue (LCF) testing of several copper alloys are prepared. The Fatigue Test Ontology (FTO) and ckan.kupferdigital data management system are developed as two main prerequisites of the data digitalization process. FTO has been modeled according to the content of the fatigue testing standard and by reusing the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), Industrial Ontology Foundry (IOF) core ontology, and Material Science and Engineering Ontology (MSEO). The ckan.kupferdigital data management system was also constructed in such a way that enables the users to prepare the protocols for mapping the datasets into the knowledge graph, and automatically convert all the primary datasets to those machine-readable data which are represented by the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The retrievability of the converted digital data was also evaluated by querying the example competency questions, confirming that ckan.kupferdigital enables publishing open data that can be highly reused in the semantic web.

Smart materials react to physical fields (e.g. electric, magnetic and thermal fields) and can be used as sensors, actuators and generators due to their bidirectional behavior. Easy and multiscale access to material data and models enables efficient research and development with regard to the selection of appropriate materials and their optimization towards specific applications. However, different working principles, measurement and analysis methods, as well as data storage approaches lead to heterogeneous and partly inconsistent datasets. The ontology-based data access (OBDA) is a suitable method to access such heterogeneous datasets easily and quickly, while material models can transform material data across certain scales for different applications. In order to connect both capabilities, we present an extended approach enabling an ontology-based data and model access (OBDMA), also supporting FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable). The OBDMA system comprises four main levels, the query, the ontology, the mapping and the database. Storing knowledge at these different levels increases the interchangeability and enables variable datasets, which is essential, especially for dynamic research fields such as smart materials. In our paper, the principles and advantages of the OBDMA approach are demonstrated for different subclasses of smart materials, but can be transferred to other materials, too.

The digitalization of materials science and engineering (MSE) is currently leading to remarkable advancements in materials research, design, and optimization, fueled by computer-driven simulations, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. While these developments promise to accelerate materials innovation, challenges in quality assurance, data interoperability, and data management have to be addressed. In response, the adoption of semantic web technologies has emerged as a powerful solution in MSE. Ontologies provide structured and machine-actionable knowledge representations that enable data integration, harmonization, and improved research collaboration. This study focuses on the tensile test ontology (TTO), which semantically represents the mechanical tensile test method and is developed within the project Plattform MaterialDigital (PMD) in connection with the PMD Core Ontology. Based on ISO 6892-1, the test standard-compliant TTO offers a structured vocabulary for tensile test data, ensuring data interoperability, transparency, and reproducibility. By categorizing measurement data and metadata, it facilitates comprehensive data analysis, interpretation, and systematic search in databases. The path from developing an ontology in accordance with an associated test standard, converting selected tensile test data into the interoperable resource description framework format, up to connecting the ontology and data is presented. Such a semantic connection using a data mapping procedure leads to an enhanced ability of querying. The TTO provides a valuable resource for materials researchers and engineers, promoting data and metadata standardization and sharing. Its usage ensures the generation of finable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable data while maintaining both human and machine actionability.