In school, you normally assume materials to be isotropic. In real life, this is seldom the case. If you can master the orientation dependencies in common metallic materials such as steel, it is also possible to tailor application-specific properties such as fatigue resistance, yield strength, and formability.

This presentation will show how MATLAB^®, together with the linear optimization and mtex toolboxes, is used at the Steel Research Center of Sandvik Materials Technology to calculate orientation dependencies in nuclear materials, and how this knowledge can be used to create tubing with improved resistance to through-wall cracking. By combining state-of-the-art X-ray diffractometers with MATLAB, it has been possible to redefine precision and accuracy in grain orientation analysis.