Multi-scale modeling in microstructure evolution of materials

Intelligent design and control of the microstructure to tailor properties of materials is the dream that materials scientists have been worked hard for many years. Formation of research area of computational materials science paves the way to realize the dream. Simulation of microstructure evolution is a chief branch of the computational materials science and has caused great attention from materials researchers. Multi-scale modeling gets popular just within 5- 6 years recently due to huge research works to try to shorten the distance between simulation and application. People have to command one or more classical simulation methods in order to do the multi-scale modeling so chief simulation methods will be discussed first and then more reviews in detail are given to the phase field simulation. The main part of the paper is carried out to introduce two key approaches to do the multi-scale modeling job. It is suggested that extension of the multiscale modeling is necessary to study the technologies to link microstructure simulation, processing simulation and property simulation each other as well as to build bridges between different simulation methods and between analytical models and numerical models.