Foreword

This Volume 22A, Fundamentals of Modeling for Metals Processing, represents an expansion of the ASM Handbook series in response to the expressed needs of members of the modeling and simulation community.

ASM International is indebted to the Co-Editors, David Furrer and S. Lee Semiatin, who had the vision for a comprehensive presentation of modeling of metals processing. They moved this vision from inception to this unified collection of content in a remarkably short time, through tireless effort. They recruited world renowned modeling experts who contributed entirely new content. We are likewise indebted to the approximately 120 volunteer authors and reviewers who fulfilled their commitments, squeezing this time intensive activity into their lives busy with family, career, and community commitments.

While this Handbook serves as an organizing vehicle for acquiring modeling knowledge, ASM International is pleased to have the means to disseminate this outstanding source of information in forms most attractive and most readily available to its members and to the technical community.

Modeling is an important aspect of “everything material.” One can model at the submicroscopic scale where atomic structure is predominant; at an intermediate, or mesoscale at which grain size/grain structure effects are important; and at the macroscopic, continuum level at which bulk properties are typically determined. Through ASM's strategic content development efforts, specific needs for high-quality materials modeling information are met. Further enhancement will be forthcoming as the Co-Editors complement this work with Volume 22B, Metals Process Simulation.

The need for modeling metallurgical behavior during processing has long been recognized and ASM has been a forum for exchange of these ideas. Through mechanistic and phenomenological approaches, solidification and deformation processes can be optimized, the resulting mechanical properties controlled, and defects minimized. As computing power has increased and its cost decreased, more sophisticated simulation of metallurgical processes has enabled material scientists and engineers to maintain competitive advantage over those not willing or able to change.

As an organization of material scientists and engineers, ASM International is pleased to offer this content to practitioners and students of modeling as they continue their exciting journey of tailoring materials and processes to meet future functional needs. This new Handbook, in its printed and electronic forms, also moves us closer to achieving a strategic objective that will shape our society for the next fifty years: to accumulate, review, and distribute comprehensive materials information and to become the global resource for quality materials information.