What's new in CES EduPack 2012?

Comparison Charts in the Eco Audit Tool

CES EduPack 2012 allows you to compare multiple products and use scenarios, dynamically displaying the energy or CO2 footprint across the life phases. The relative impact of any changes can be instantly assessed from the '% Change' chart, complementing detailed reports on the environmental impact of each material and process. The new Eco Summary chart (pictured, right) makes it even easier to demonstrate the benefits and limitations of different product designs and life scenarios. 

These charts also provide interactive guidance notes (pictured, bottom right) that suggest techniques to reduce environmental impact, helping students explore how best to improve a design.

The underlying eco data has been revised and updated, and seventeen new electrical components have been added, simplifying specification of bills of materials.

More on the Eco Audit Tool »

Favorite Records

You can now flag records of particular interest (e.g., commonly used materials or those relevant to the current teaching topic). To emphasize how these 'favorites' compare to other materials, they can be highlighted on charts at the click of a button, .

To focus on materials of interest to your course, you can create subsets based on these favorite records. At the request of CES EduPack customers (for example, during the product feedback sessions at the Materials Education Symposia) these can be saved, exported, imported, and shared, allowing others to quickly and easily implement your demonstrations and student exercises within their own EduPack software.

More information on EduPack software »

Data to support Introductory level teaching

In addition to the new software features, introductory level teaching also benefits from updated environmental and pricing information, and new records have been added for gold and silver.

A new 'date first used' attribute in the Level 1 and 2 databases helps students graphically see the developments in the history of materials, and how new materials have expanded the scope of material property space. For example, the images (right) compare the materials in use prior to 1800 AD (left) with the present day (right).

More information on CES EduPack Information Resources »

Supporting advanced teaching

General

For more advanced teaching and research, there are numerous improvements to the software usability, as well as new and updated data. The food contact attribute has been revised, helping students such as those involved in capstone design projects to consider the suitability of materials for applications with health/safety constraints. More detailed compositional attributes improve screening for, in particular, maximum constituent content values. Environmental data has also been reviewed and updated, including primary material production data, recycling, and water usage. New economic data reflects current cost differences between material types and classes, and allows students to explore the performance vs price trade-off.

Polymers

Those teaching Polymers will benefit from revised polyamide records (quoted values now represent the conditioned state) and the latest data on individual polymer grades for specialist projects and teaching, using the links between the core CES EduPack database and the following leading sources of plastics information for industry:

• CAMPUS Plastics—latest version of this resource containing ~5,300 plastics grades from 19 leading vendors, measured to comparable ISO standards.
• IDES Plastics—latest version of the data module with nearly 80,000 plastics property datasheets from ~725 suppliers, with appropriate hyperlinks to ASTM datasheets.

Metals

The level 3 Materials and Process database has extended coverage of cast steels and aluminums. Other data revisions include a new 'Galvanic potential' attribute that supports the teaching of corrosion, highlighting the relative position of material and the likelihood of galvanic corrosion. The new 'alternative/similar' designation for ferrous materials helps searching based on standards and designations.

The Aerospace Edition of CES EduPack now offers the MMPDS-05 version of the standard reference of alloy data for aerospace component design (previously Mil-Hdbk-5).

More on specialist CES EduPack information resources »

Teaching on Energy Storage Systems

The Low Carbon Power Edition  has been updated for 2012 to include 16 new datasheets on Energy Storage Systems. Together with the low carbon power and nuclear engineering information already available in this edition, it supports the teaching of sustainability and energy-related courses, enabling students to explore the options for energy storage systems in a rational and quantitative manner. It covers:

• 6 different batteries for electrochemical storage
• 2 electromagnetic energy storage systems
• Onboard and utility scale hydrogen storage
• 5 forms of Mechanical storage
• Thermal Storage

Records include a description of the storage system and key features such as capital, area, and resource intensity, operational costs, and efficiency. In-depth information is available in the new Materials for Energy Storage Systems white paper.

More information on the Low Carbon Power Edition »

The Hybrid Synthesizer

This innovative tool was released in CES EduPack 2011, providing an easy-to-use predictive software tool that helps students investigate the effects of using hybrid materials and structures, available as an add-on-tool to CES EduPack. Your feedback has led to enhancements in 2012:

• Shear deformation is now included in sandwich panel models, providing more information on the factors that limit performance. This helps students as they consider how to improve performance.
• Price is now included in composites (Simple Bounds) models, providing first estimation of composite cost, compatible with the sandwich panel model.

More information on the Hybrid Synthesizer »

Improving usability, productivity, and presentation

User feedback has helped define a program of ongoing improvements to the usability of the software, making it even more intuitive, and reducing the number of mouse-clicks to perform useful task:

• Tooltip added to graph labels—shows range and average values for labeled record, enables chart values to be identified without the need to open up the datasheet (pictured, top right)
• Automatic titles of selection stages—makes it easier to identify stages. When combined with the 'enable/disable stage' feature this simplifies the examination and demonstration of the impact of design constraints
• Highlight of user-defined  and favorite records—New buttons added to the graph stage toolbar to highlight the location on charts of materials on your favorites list
• Locate in Browse Tree—Right click on a material on a chart or datasheet (pictured, below right), and access additional information on material type and classification, and helps with identification of similar materials
• New ‘Eco audit’ button added to the main application toolbar, providing quick and easy access

Read information on CES EduPack Software »

Updates to Teaching Resources

The Teaching Resources Website now contains updated white papers, Powerpoint lectures, and Getting Started User Guides (including English, French, German, and Spanish). Find out how to get the most out of your new software, and save time updating existing courses and setting new exercises.

Visit the teaching resources  »

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Latest Teaching Resources by email »

More opportunities to get involved

If you have features you would like to see in CES EduPack 2013, you can use the Feature Request button in the software to let us know.

The Education Team regularly run webinars for both new and existing users of CES EduPack, providing opportunities for Q&A and for you to give your feedback. You can also sign up for  short courses with Prof Mike Ashby, and join the CES EduPack Development Meeting, which take place around the Materials Education Symposia this Spring.

You could also request a development database from Granta's Education Team, and give us your feedback to help shape CES EduPack 2013. These include:

• New, Emerging, and Unusual Materials
• Bio-engineering Level 3
• Level 1 database for High Schools
• Hybrid Synthesizer models

What's currently 'In Development'  »