The development of phase-based property data using the CALPHAD method and infrastructure needs

Initially, the CALPHAD (Calculation of Phase Diagrams) method was established as a tool for treating thermodynamics and phase equilibria of multicomponent systems. Since then the method has been successfully applied to diffusion mobilities in multicomponent systems, creating the foundation for simulation of diffusion processes in these systems. Recently, the CALPHAD method has been expanded to other phase-based properties, including molar volumes and elastic constants, and has the potential to treat electrical and thermal conductivity and even two-phase properties, such as interfacial energies. Advances in the CALPHAD method or new information on specific systems frequently require that already assessed systems be re-assessed. Therefore, the next generation of CALPHAD necessitates data repositories so that when new models are developed or new experimental and computational information becomes available the relevant low-order (unary, binary, and ternary) systems can be re-assessed efficiently to develop the new multicomponent descriptions. The present work outlines data and infrastructure needs for efficient CALPHAD assessments and updates, highlighting the requirement for data repositories with flexible data formats that can be accessed by a variety of tools and that can evolve as data needs change. Within these repositories, the data must be stored with the appropriate metadata to enable the evaluation of the confidence of the stored data. © 2014, Campbell et al.; licensee Springer.