Multiscale modeling of microstructure-property relations

The recent decades have seen significant progress in linking the mechanical performance of materials to their underlying microstructure. This article presents an overview of some of these achievements, trends, and challenges. Attention is given to methods initially developed for micromechanics and their gradual evolution toward powerful multiscale methods. Various methods have been proposed for bridging scales in mechanics of materials, all aiming for efficiency and accuracy. Computational homogenization is one of these powerful approaches, now used systematically for the assessment of structure–property relations. Novel solution methods and model reduction techniques provide tools to speed up the structure–property analysis, whereby large-scale computations have been made possible. Truly fast analyses of microstructures may be expected in the near future