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GRANTA MI 3.0

GRANTA MI 3.0 provides powerful new tools and analysis features to help users apply materials data - for example, in responding to restricted substance regulations, in cost reduction initiatives, or in materials engineering.

What's new in GRANTA MI 3.0?

Read what's new for particular solution areas:

• Materials engineering for aerospace, defense, and energy
• Eco design and environmental regulations
• Optimizing materials and manufacturing choices across the enterprise

or read about the new features:

• New GRANTA MI:Restricted Substances
• Enterprise Materials Optimizer
• Advanced querying tools
• Embedded equations and logic
• Comparing test data with design curves
• Other software features

What's new by solution area

Materials engineering for aerospace, defense, and energy

GRANTA MI 3.0 delivers a series of improvements and enhancements guided by the Material Data Management Consortium (MDMC) to maintain, use, and analyze the materials data that is critical in aerospace, defense, and energy. For example, the new embedded equations and logic feature provides the ability to store and plot (as in the picture) materials models. This is particularly useful to materials groups seeking to develop and refine descriptions of complex materials properties and to designers and engineers aiming to apply this information.

GRANTA MI 3.0 is the latest milestone in an on-going process in which MDMC members identify and prioritize needs, then review, and finally use developments in the GRANTA MI system. Prioritization of features for the next release is in progress. The process ensures that members' needs are met at a fraction of the cost of in-house development, while also ensuring that all GRANTA MI users benefit from industry best practice.

Relevant new features:

• Embedded equations and logic
• Comparing test data with design curves
• Advanced querying tools
• Other software features

Eco design and environmental regulations

The new GRANTA MI:Restricted Substances helps organizations to avoid risks, such as materials obsolescence, due to restricted substance regulations (for example, the REACH regulation) and to design in the context of these regulations. The product is the first result of the new Environmental Materials Information Technology (EMIT) Consortium, which is advising Granta on the development of software tools and data to address the materials- and process-related issues that control environmental impact in the lifecycles of engineered products.

Relevant new features:

• New GRANTA MI:Restricted Substances

Optimizing materials and manufacturing choices

GRANTA MI:Enterprise Materials Optimizer (MI:EMO) helps to ensure a consistent approach across an organization to identifying materials choices that best combine cost and functional objectives. GRANTA MI 3.0 delivers a major revision of MI:EMO, including advanced cost models, an easy-to-use user interface to assist designers in applying the method, and new visualization tools for identification of cost-functionality trade-offs. MI:EMO is developed with the Materials Strategy Consortium, a collaborative project creating software tools to help optimize materials and manufacturing choices.

Applying cost models to investigate different manufacturing
scenarios in GRANTA MI:EMO

Relevant new features:

• GRANTA MI:Enterprise Materials Optimizer
• Advanced querying tools

New software features

GRANTA MI:Restricted Substances

GRANTA MI:Restricted Substances enables a comprehensive in-house restricted substances solution. This solution provides an information system, tools, and data that enable product development organizations to reduce risks due to REACH and similar regulations and to build consideration of such regulations into their design process.

Viewing the Restricted Substances data module within GRANTA MI. The user has navigated to information on the REACH regulations in the legislation table (shown in the left hand panel) and then clicked through to one of the substances listed as a Substance of Very High Concern under Annex XV of REACH. The record for that substance is shown in the right hand panel.

Key new features available with GRANTA MI 3.0:

• Restricted Substances data module - the first commercial release of this module contains information on 52 different pieces of restricted substance legislation from around the world. It also includes extensive data for 4,400 restricted substances. The data will be updated quarterly.
  
  
• MI:Restricted Substances input tools - new template tables allow companies to add their in-house substances, in-house regulations, and bought-in components to a GRANTA MI database. These can be linked to records in the Restricted Substances Data Module, making it easy to identify potential restricted substance problems.
  
  
• MI:Restricted Substances reporting tools - Substance summary ratings can be shown automatically on records for materials and substances - for example, stating whether the material or substance is 'banned', 'targeted', or 'regulated'. A new specialized report format shows all restricted substances contained in a specified list of materials. Users may apply a legislation profile, so that the reported data reflects their interests. For example, if working on a product for California, only relevant substance regulations for California would be included in the summary rating.

Read more on MI:Restricted Substances >>>

GRANTA MI:Enterprise Materials Optimizer

GRANTA MI:Enterprise Materials Optimizer (MI:EMO) is a unique tool to aid materials and manufacturing choices. It ensures consistency across the enterprise, while helping designers and engineers to go beyond simple considerations of base material price or engineering function, and to make a more realistic evaluation of material and process alternatives. 

Part of the new MI:EMO user interface, which makes it easy for a user
to specify design objectives

GRANTA MI 3.0 delivers a major revision of MI:EMO which provides:

• A new advanced cost model, allowing the user to include consideration of: the base cost of the material, the cost of processing options, and any additional costs that may apply to particular material/process categories
  
  
• A new 'wizard' interface making it easier for users to step through the process of specifying their requirements
  
  
• New reporting tools, for example, to highlight on a graph cheaper materials that can offer the same performance as a reference material
  
  
• The ability to investigate materials options for a new design or, alternatively, to identify materials that may offer a cheaper replacement for an existing material - supporting both the designer and users in commodities/supply chain functions

Read more on GRANTA MI:Enterprise Materials Optimizer >>>

Advanced querying tools

The tools for querying a GRANTA MI database have been enhanced, creating an intuitive but powerful system that makes it quick and easy to specify everything from simple Google-style searches to complex, subtle queries. For example, users can rapidly combine traditional text-string searches with materials selection criteria based on numerical property data. Users can get the data they want, as quickly as possible.

Example query - a quick, intuitive, and flexible way to combine text
searches with selection based on property data

GRANTA MI makes it easy to ask questions of corporate materials data, such as "What polypropylenes made by Dow or Ticona have a flexural strength greater than 70MPa, cost less than $10/kg, and are already used in our products?"

Embedded equations and logic

The new embedded equations and logic feature allows data on GRANTA MI datasheets to be determined automatically using underlying expressions or logical statements. This capability helps with the maintenance and use of materials data, enabling, for example:

• Automatic generation or updating of property values using equations - e.g., calculating and displaying the specific stiffness for a material using the values for stiffness and density in the record
  
  
• Storage of complex materials models (or 'math functional data') in the system, and use of these models to plot materials performance - e.g., create a fatigue curve from the values of the model coefficients stored on a datasheet using a fatigue model stored elsewhere in the database
  
  
• Plotting of a family or families of curves for a material (below), with the ability to quickly visualize the changes due to variations in the model parameters
  
  
• Use of logic within records - e.g., to select the fatigue model used depending on the composition of the material

Curves representing materials models for fatigue strength, plotted using the new equations and logic feature, are compared to test data, using the new data comparison chart feature

Comparing test data with design curves

A new data comparison chart feature allows users to quickly compare a curve with raw data from any part of the database. Thus users can, for example, quickly plot raw test data onto a design curve generated from a materials model, verifying the fit between the data and the model (as shown above). A new set of raw data could then be added quickly to enable study of any changes in scatter or distribution.

Other software features

A number of other features also help to improve the user experience and effectiveness of GRANTA MI.

• GRANTA MI:Toolbox improvements - a series of enhancements to ease the import of the full range of supported data types into the system via the text, Excel, and bulk data importers.
  
  
• 'Trailing zeroes' - ensures that the accuracy with which data is entered into the database is retained and displayed, for example, capturing the distinction between 1.2MPa (an accuracy of +/- 0.05 MPa) and 1.20MPa (accuracy +/- 0.005MPa). Accuracy is also retained, converted, and reported when a different unit system is chosen.
  
  
• Custom authentication - increases the flexibility of the access control features in GRANTA MI, so that the system can identify a user based on any known user authentication system, and so that access control is easier to administer for non-IT specialists.

Previous releases: 2.0 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.1