Granta Design today announced the latest advances to support both simulation and materials information management in engineering enterprises working with composites and advanced materials. Central to this is the idea of“bridging the gap” between design or test data and the input data required by the finite element community, as well as for Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME).
Viewing composite data within the GRANTA MI web browser interface. The datasheet is showing information about a laminate, including links to data on the constituent layers.
At next week’s JEC Europe (Paris, March 11-13), Granta will be demonstrating the 2014 release of the Composites Design Data Module, providing traceable design data from the AGATE and NCAMP global aerospace projects.This material property data compilation covers the constituents, intermediates, and processing steps used to generate over 600 laminates, including design data tested in up to four standard conditions. It has applications across research, design, testing, and simulation.
Discussions on Granta’s booth (F74 in Hall 7.3) will also draw on the outcomes of the recent Material Data Management Consortium (MDMC) meeting, hosted by Northrop Grumman in January. This meeting saw the launch of Phase II of the Composite Data Management Project, which looks to provide additional tools and traceable workflows for simulation and multi-scale modeling in ICME. This willsmooth the transition between the test data generated by materials and process groups and its application (and re-application) in simulation tools and virtual product development systems.
Phase I of the Composite Data Management Project has already delivered and validated a robust solution for managing the complete materials data lifecycle, GRANTA MI™. It ensures that information is easily accessible, traceable, and available for use in further analysis and simulation, and that the results of such analysis can then be stored in the same system.A key advantage of this material data workflow is the ability to combine in-house materials expertise with world-leading reference data. Thus external material property data, such as the latest Composite Design Data, can be provided alongsidethe complete range of managed in-house composite materials information.
An ongoing challenge,especially for the finite element community,comes from the additional data processing, testing, or validation needed to meet the specific needs of their software tools and element formulations. In Phase II, the leading aerospace, energy, and defense organizations which make up the MDMC are working to make it even easier to meet these needs by maintaining complete “pedigree” information for data generated from simulation. This means storing the metadata which describes not just the sources of material property data, but, for example, parameter settings and details about how and when simulations were run. Drawing on this expertise, Phase II will help to reduce risk and save time in the development of composite structures and the products that use them.
“We look forward to discussing these latest developments at the JEC Show next week,” commented Granta’s Dr. Will Marsden, continuing, “we are delighted that collaboration with our composite-focused customers is enhancing our support for both composite users and material producers.” He also encouraged any organization with an interest in managing or using composite data to consider joiningthe MDMC, which represents a highly cost-effective way to implement best practice.