In response to the market-driven pressure for reducing time to manufacture, numerical analysis has become state of the art in materials science and processing. Over the past two decades, a large range of different virtual processing models have been developed worldwide and software codes have been partially commercialized. For a large number of process steps (and also complete manufacturing procedures), these numerical tools have proven to be successful in terms of quality improvement and process design. A substantial upgrade of this procedure is to combine virtual models with numerical optimization techniques.

The main focus of this special issue will be on the novel techniques applied for automated optimization of materials production processes based on processed state-of-art process simulations and optimization methods. The special issue will become an international forum for researchers to summarize the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with a special emphasis given to computational impacts on the real materials production technologies obtained within the last five years. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Casting and forging processes
• Rolling and sheet metal forming technologies
• Heat treatment and welding
• Surface modification technologies

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal’s Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amse/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/amse/somt/ according to the following timetable: