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Support for Research Projects

• Capture all materials data relating to your research projects in a single system - never lose a piece of data
  
  
• Capture the relationships between data and associated notes and documents - create a research knowledge base for future mining and re-use
  
  
• Combine in-house data, collaborators' data, and information from authoritative external references
  
  
• Share information in a simple-to-access but secure and controlled environment

The problem

Government agencies, laboratories, and other research projects may have widely differing requirements for materials information management and analysis, depending on their focus and responsibilities. However, a number of critical issues are likely to recur, whether your focus is research, regulation, or design and production.

These include:

The need to access or publish reference information - you might need to get up-to-date data on materials and processes. Or you may work for a regulatory authority or institute that needs to collate, analyze, approve, and publish such data. In either case, you face the difficulties of distributing and using complex materials information efficiently across many users.

The need to manage materials knowledge - whether your data relates to materials testing, modeling, simulation, or design, you will need to capture it, facilitate its analysis, and make it available across research groups or project teams. Such materials data management is a complex task given the specialist nature of the information.

The need to share information securely with collaborators - similar issues are faced in collaborative environments, whether within a large organization such as a National Lab, or between organizations, for example, as part of government/industry collaborative projects. There is often a need to ensure security and access control for the data, which may be commercially sensitive or even relate to national security.

The need to use materials data - scientists and engineers use materials information to inform design and decision making. For example, you may be looking for guidance in developing an advanced composite material, or analyzing the environmental impact of products with a view to developing guidelines on materials retirement or substitution. You need tools to easily analyze and compare materials properties - often seeking to optimize combinations of physical, mechanical, biological, economic, and environmental characteristics.

Granta's solution

GRANTA MI is the leading system for materials information management. It can store the full range of materials information - for example, numbers, graphs, multi-dimensional property data, spreadsheets, documents, photomicrographs and other images. And it captures and retains the relationships between this information. So you can use a GRANTA MI database to record all of your project data, building up a knowledge-base for future mining and re-use.

GRANTA MI's data management features are ideal for supporting collaborative projects. You can control access to data, manage changing information with version control, and publish information within a simple-to-use web-browser-based interface.

You can enrich your own data, and that from collaborators, with information from Granta's extensive catalog of materials reference data. Aditionally, GRANTA MI offers a range of specialist materials analysis tools, augmented by the in-depth capabilities of the CES Selector software for rational materials selection.

This combination of tools:

• helps researchers to build more effectively on previous work and to publish their data in a structured digital format
  
  
• maximizes return from the investments made by project sponsors
  
  
• helps to eliminate duplication of work
  
  
• builds richer data resources for researchers to mine, and provides tools to aid the mining

Related example solutions

• Routine management of materials test data
  
  
• Expert materials selection (particularly for plastics and steels)
  
  
• Online publishing of materials information
  

Further information

GRANTA MI, the leading system for materials information management in engineering enterprises

Granta's materials reference data

CES Selector for materials analysis and selection