Materials science fundamentally has a math & computability problem. Rigorous materials simulations at a nanometre scale seem now feasible - so you could model physical properties of small groups of atoms - eg. Modeling molecular reactions at a sub-atomic level. Bulk property simulations at a centi and up scale also work and so you can do first principles based design and use tricks like finite element methods to deal with the underlying stochasticity to a degree. Materials properties however largely arise from features between nano and micro scale - grain boundaries, dislocations etc. These are computationally infeasible today - there are neither engineering solutions, not math tricks that make this tractable and so materials science and engineering becomes a grind of experimentation and metrology.
This is interesting in that it seems to be making the grind more efficient. I think the true breakthrough will likely be proper scale quantum computing to make the first principles design feasible
This is interesting in that it seems to be making the grind more efficient. I think the true breakthrough will likely be proper scale quantum computing to make the first principles design feasible