The research project MAPAA (Multiscale Analysis of Precipitation in Al-Cu alloys) is an Individual Fellowship funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the Horizon 2020 Program of the European Union.

In this project, a novel methodology is presented to determine the precipitate structure resulting from high temperature ageing and the resulting strength of the alloys from first principles calculations. The strategy is based in two main pillars. The first one is the determination of the Al-rich part of the Al-Cu phase diagram by means the construction of effective cluster expansion Hamiltonians that can extrapolate first principles calculations in combination with statistical mechanics approaches based on Monte Carlo simulations to include the entropic contributions, enabling parameter-free predictions of the phase diagram. The second one is the combination of this information with phase field modeling to predict the homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation and growth of precipitates during high temperature ageing and with molecular dynamics and dislocation dynamics simulations to predict the strengthening provided by the precipitates.

The approach developed in this project will improve the predictive power of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering in Al-Cu alloys.