Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation https://doi.org/10.1007/s40192-020-00182-4 TECHNICAL ARTICLE ICME Framework for Simulation of Microstructure and Property Evolution During Gas Metal Arc Welding in DP980 Steel M. J. Deepu 1  · G. Phanikumar 1 Received: 28 July 2020 / Accepted: 14 August 2020 © The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society 2020 Abstract An integrated computational materials engineering (ICME)-based workfow was adopted for the study of microstructure and property evolution at the heat-afected zone (HAZ) of gas metal arc-welded DP980 steel. The macroscale simulation of the welding process was performed with fnite element method (FEM) implemented in Simufact Welding ® software and was experimentally validated. The time–temperature profle at HAZ obtained from FEM simulation was physically simulated using Gleeble 3800 ® thermo-mechanical simulator with a dilatometer attachment. The resulting phase transformations and microstructure were studied experimentally. The austenite-to-ferrite and austenite-to-bainite transformations during cooling at HAZ were simulated using the Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov (JMAK) equation implemented in JMatPro ® software and with phase-feld modeling implemented in Micress ® software. The phase fractions and the phase transformation kinet- ics simulated by phase-feld method agreed well with experiments. A single scaling factor introduced in JMatPro ® software minimized the deviation between calculations and experiments. Asymptotic homogenization implemented in Homat ® soft- ware was used to calculate the efective macroscale thermo-elastic properties from the phase-feld simulated microstructure. FEM-based virtual uniaxial tensile test with Abaqus ® software was used to calculate the efective macroscale fow curves from the phase-feld simulated microstructure. The fow curve from virtual test simulation showed good agreement with the fow curve obtained with tensile test in Gleeble ® . An ICME-based vertical integration workfow in two stages is proposed. With this ICME workfow, efective properties at the macroscale could be obtained by taking microstructure morphology and orientation into consideration. Keywords Phase-feld simulation · Dual-phase steel · Microstructure evolution · Welding · ICME · Vertical integration Introduction Integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) approach can help in reducing the cycle time for product development. Usage of physically based simulation in such an approach ofers several interesting challenges such as taking microstructure into consideration while performing the macroscale simulation. Microstructure simulation is an important aspect in the ICME approach [1–3]. Microstruc- ture simulation in steel involves simulation of simultaneous phase transformation such as the simultaneous transforma- tion of austenite to ferrite, bainite, and martensite. These simulations are a major component of the vertical integra- tion aspect of the ICME approach. Vertical integration aims at integrating simulations at diferent length scales and can help in consideration of microstructure information while performing macroscale fnite element (FE) simulation [4, 5]. The currently available commercial FE simulation tools such as Simufact ® and SYSWELD ® use simplifed approaches based on semiempirical models and rule of mixtures to pre- dict the microstructure and corresponding properties. Rahul et al. [6] simulated welding in titanium alloy with fnite ele- ment method and used physical simulation in Gleeble 3800 ® to simulate the heat-afected zone (HAZ) welding cycles. An integrated two-stage workfow was also proposed for accel- erating the design of new alloys for weldability. Phase-feld modeling [7–9] is a powerful tool that uses difuse interface approach [10] to simulate the various phase * M. J. Deepu mm14d207@smail.iitm.ac.in G. Phanikumar gphani@iitm.ac.in 1 Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India