Methods of selecting material compositions and designing materials having a target property

An alloy composition selection and visualization apparatus, the apparatus comprising:

• a computing device comprising a processor;
• a thermodynamic phase data extraction module configured to receive an input comprising thermodynamic phase data of a plurality of alloys, wherein each alloy is a multi-phase system having at least four alloying elements, and wherein the thermodynamic phase data for each of the plurality of alloys is calculated by varying an amount of each of three or more of the alloying elements as an independent thermodynamic variable over a specified composition range, the input being incapable of being displayed in a two or three dimensional graphical image, and configured to extract therefrom a plurality of thermodynamic quantities for a set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria corresponding to each of the alloys by the computing device,
• wherein the extracted thermodynamic quantities are predetermined to be correlated to microstructures associated with physical properties of the alloy;
• a storage module comprising a transitory or a non-transitory medium configured to store therein the extracted thermodynamic quantities for the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria;
• an electronic data mining module configured to electronically mine the stored thermodynamic quantities for the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria using the computing device to rank at least a subset of the alloys based on a comparison of at least a subset of the thermodynamic quantities that are correlated to the target property;
• and
• an outputting medium configured to output information associated with a ranked subset of the alloys, wherein the outputted information comprises one or more data points plotted in a two or three dimensional graphical image having one or more of the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria represented as one or more axes, wherein each of the data points represents an alloy composition.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon that when executed cause a computing device to perform steps for visually outputting information for use in selecting a composition of an alloy having a target property, the steps comprising:

• receiving an input comprising thermodynamic phase data for a plurality of alloys, wherein each alloy is a multi-phase system having at least four alloying elements, and wherein the thermodynamic phase data for each of the plurality of alloys is calculated by varying an amount of each of three or more of the alloying elements as an independent thermodynamic variable over a specified composition range, the input being incapable of being displayed in a two or three dimensional graphical image;
• extracting from the thermodynamic phase data a plurality of thermodynamic quantities for a set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria corresponding to each of the alloys by the computing device,
• wherein the extracted thermodynamic quantities are predetermined to be correlated to microstructures associated with physical properties of the alloy;
• storing the extracted thermodynamic quantities for the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria in a computer-readable medium;
• electronically mining the stored thermodynamic quantities for the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria using the computing device to rank at least a subset of the alloys based on a comparison of at least a subset of the thermodynamic quantities that are correlated to the target property;
• and
• outputting information associated with a ranked subset of the alloys, wherein the outputted information comprises one or more data points plotted in a two or three dimensional graphical image having one or more of the set of thermodynamic evaluation criteria represented as one or more axes, wherein each of the data points represents an alloy composition.