Overview of “NASA Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) Reduced Gravity and Microgravity Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) Study Final Report”

NASA’s push for advanced materials and processes in space and terrestrially, as captured in the latest National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space has underscored the need for BPS engagement with the ICME community. BPS and its predecessors have sponsored extensive flight and ground experiments yielding benchmark datasets including thermophysical properties and solidification. An overview is provided of a recent report highlighting critical research areas such as meso-scale bridging to grain-structure and coupling of fluid flow and solidification where benchmark materials science experiments conducted in the quiescent and microgravity environment are case studies. Rapid improvements in compute power and diversity are enabling linked simulations from micro- through mesoscale. A variety of accomplishments and findings resulted from this confluence of academia, industry, and government experts. The recommendations of the report provide a path to pursue ICME as an evolution of BPS projects.