Using electronic structure to guide AI in designing new materials
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Oct-2026 11:16 ET (20-Oct-2026 15:16 GMT/UTC)
Kyoto, Japan -- Structural metals used in engineering projects are expected to have both high strength and high ductility: an ability to withstand heavy loads and deform before failure. Achieving both of these properties at the same time, however, is challenging.
An important measure of ductility is uniform elongation, or the amount of deformation a metal can sustain before it concentrates in one small area, resulting in a fracture. Some metals become stronger as they are deformed -- a phenomenon known as strain hardening -- so if a material can continue to harden sufficiently during deformation, theoretically uniform stretching can be maintained. However, a metal's effectiveness usually decreases as deformation continues. While some advanced metals obtain additional strain hardening from deformation-twinning and martensitic transformation, these processes tend to compete with each other, so metals are commonly designed to rely predominantly on just one or the other.
A team of researchers at Kyoto University wondered if both mechanisms could be activated in the same material at different stages of deformation, and hypothesized this could cause strains to harden sequentially rather than compete with each other. They proposed a strategy in which different deformation mechanisms are activated in sequence, with each providing additional strain hardening as the previous step becomes less effective.
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