Being one of the driving forces in industrial development, manufacturing processes are faced with significantly changing requirements. Amongst others, these requirements are based on an increased awareness regarding environmental resources and energy efficiency. Moreover, the flexibility in setting up manufacturing processes becomes more and more important, as the variety of demands with respect to the functional design of products also increases. The concept of functionally graded workpieces made of a single material and manufactured by thermo-mechanically coupled process steps represents a promising approach with respect to the changing requirements. The use of single material systems supports an efficient and cost effective recycling, whereas the direct coupling of forming and heat treatment within the process reduces process steps and energy requirements. This concept has been proposed around 2003 and is funded as transregional collaborative research centre SFB/TR TRR 30 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) since July 2006. In order to exploit the potential of this approach, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Kassel, the University of Paderborn, and the TU Dortmund University is working on the fundamentals of functional gradation. The topics range from process design, material modelling and numerics to product optimization. In the first volume, the results of the first three years of the SFB/TR TRR 30 were summarized. Based on these results, the identification and analysis of thermo-mechanically induced mechanisms for exploiting new degrees of freedom for the design of functionally graded workpieces is presented in this volume. Novel means for functionally grading the microstructural characteristics of metal and particularly plastic parts are reported. In this context, also the challenges posed to the preliminary and subsequent process steps, such as coating and machining, are considered. All these contributions represent important steps towards an efficient and integrative planning of functionally graded products and thermo-mechanically coupled process steps. As in the first volume, a summary of the most important results of all research projects is provided. These summaries are blocked with respect to the research topics – process design, material modelling, numerical treatment, and process optimization. Each article includes a list of publications in order to account for details and to document the scientific impact of the research. All members of the SFB/TR TRR 30 want to thank the DFG for t he generous support provided.weiterlesen