The digitalization of materials science faces the challenge of being able to store heterogeneous data and information systematically in decentralized data spaces and in a generally comprehensible and exchangeable manner, and furthermore to generate knowledge from these data. This is an enormous challenge for materials science because of the thematically broad and widely diversified subject domains. This is especially true if all entities involved in the life cycle of a material needs to be considered. Within the project KupferDigital, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, concepts and solutions are being developed that can be used for the comprehensive digitalization of the life cycle of copper materials.

First, a generally applicable ontology-based data concept and its implementation in a material data space will be presented, which enables the exchange of domain knowledge between all entities involved in the life cycle of copper as a material. On the presented basis, the exchange of knowledge can be realized fully automatically and seamlessly.

Using an implemented prototype as an example, the functionality and benefits of the concept are presented for partially automated alloy development as well as experimental validation of mechanical properties.

The shown example of an alloy development demonstrates how, in the future, the generic concepts of digitization can be used to holistically evaluate and accelerate material development in a computer-aided manner, considering all instances involved in the life cycle of copper materials.