Reference: United States Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST Technical Note 1405 (1993).
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Next: Introduction
Dale P. Bentz, Edward J. Garboczi, and R. Tate Coverdale*
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, ND 20899
*Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
An education module demonstrating the principles of computational materials science has been developed. The module consists of: software that executes on a personal computer, and this NIST Technical Note, which provides documentation and instructions for using the computer software. The computer programs are available for both DOS-compatible PC and Macintosh computing environments. Four separate computer programs illustrate the development of microstructure during cement hydration, mercury intrusion porosimetry, percolation of overlapping ellipses and rectangles as a function as aspect ratio, and percolation of non- overlapping hard cores each encompassed by a soft overlapping shell. All of the programs operate on two-dimensional microstructures due to the space and time limitations imposed by a personal computer environment. The computer software is interactive and highly graphics- oriented. To date, the computer module has been utilized in a variety of undergraduate and graduate level civil engineering material classes. Feedback from faculty and students has been used to revise and enhance the capabilities of the computer programs.