Hybrid Synthesizer

Hybrid Synthesizer enables you to predict the performance of hybrid materials and structures (such as sandwich panels, foams, lattices and composites) and compare them with other materials in a selection project.

What is the Hybrid Synthesizer for?

• Product designers: investigate the benefits of using hybrid materials and structures in your design—identify potential material combinations and configuration details before detailed design
• Materials suppliers: demonstrate the benefits of materials relative to competing materials for particular applications—such as the use of sandwich panels in weight-critical designs
• Materials development teams: investigate and identify new hybrid systems that exhibit unique combinations of properties—focus your development on material systems that offer performance benefits for your target application 

Predicting the equivalent flexural modulus of aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels
and comparing their performance with other materials

What does the Hybrid Synthesizer do?

With the tool, you can predict the performance of hybrid materials and structures based on the performance of their constituent materials. These constituent materials can be any of the thousands of covered by the MaterialUniverse data module. A simple 'Wizard' user interface guides you through the entry of parameters required by the Hybrid Synthesizer model.

After the calculation, data for the predicted materials are stored on datasheets, accessed via the standard data browsing tools within CES Selector. Data for these materials can be plotted alongside data from the rest of the database, enabling quick and easy comparison of the hybrid structures with other materials (as in the graph above).

Records created by the Hybrid Synthesizer can also be specified in subsequent models, enabling the performance of new hybrid materials in hybrid structures (such as sandwich panels, lattices, multi-layer materials, and short fiber reinforced composites) to be evaluated.

What materials can the tool model? 

Hybrid Synthesizer includes models that allow it to predict properties for the following materials types:

• Sandwich panels
• Foams and Octet lattices
• Unidirectional, quasi isotropic and particulate composites (using a 'simple bounds' model)
• Multi-layer materials (2,3,4,5,6,7-layer)
  note, this is not for modelling multilayer continuous fiber composites with different fiber orientations
• Short fiber composites (aligned & random fiber)
• Closed-cell foam
• Honeycombs (expanded & extruded)
• Dual material lattice  (controlled thermal expansion)

Adding your own models

It is also possible to add your own models to the tool, allowing the Hybrid Synthesizer to predict a wider range of hybrid materials types and tailoring the tool to your applications. Granta provides training and documentation (a new "Hybrid Synthesizer Model Writer's Guide") aimed at showing materials specialists or engineers how to implement these models into the system.

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Acknowledgement Initial development work on the Hybrid Synthesizer was supported with funding and industrial partner input from the European Union Project MANUDIRECT. More on the MANUDIRECT project »