Additive Manufacturing—understanding process parameters

The latest GRANTA MI:Additive Manufacturing software enables users to manage, analyze, and apply materials and process information for the development and production of additively-manufactured (AM) parts.

This package, built on the GRANTA MI system, includes a data structure and capabilities to manage and share data on powders, builds, machine parameters, parts, and tests. It has been enhanced with new features from GRANTA MI Version 10 and using real implementation experience:

• The new GRANTA MI:Mat Analyzer app—visualize and understand vital relationships between material properties and process parameters. This can guide process optimization.
• New ‘workflow’ features enable controlled processes—e.g., support build and test management for a specific project, or implement request and approval processes enterprise-wide.
• Integration with a range of AM machines—including those from EOS, Arcam, and Renishaw.

When supporting AM projects, the Granta Services team configures the technology to the exact needs of the project. Two recent examples were: creating a tool to handle specialized powder material management, taking account of blending and recycling effects; and building a parameter-set development tool, which manages the optimized process parameters. These tools and the expertise that built them are available for use by other clients.

Contact us to arrange a meeting at these AM events where we will be exhibiting:

• Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG), Chicago, IL, USA, Mar 19-23
• Business Convention for Additive Manufacturing, Lyon, France, Mar 22-23
• RAPID + TCT, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, May 9-11.

2. Project bridges gap between composites characterization and simulation

Altair and Imperial College London share experience in webinar on March 1

The GRANTA MI:Composites software helps companies to manage complex composite information, minimizing risk and error, and speeding up qualification processes. The next challenge is to support simulation, whether that’s using on-cloud simulation codes such as NanoHub, or integrating with codes such as LS-Dyna for crash simulations. A great example of developing technology in this area is the UK-DATACOMP project, which has involved industry and public organizations to provide simulation-ready data for crash simulation.

Join us for a webinar on March 1, which will review the outcomes from this project. The session, ‘Mind the gap between composites characterization and simulation‘, will include guest speakers from project partners Altair and Imperial College London, as well as from Granta Design. Learn how integrating novel composites characterization methods, model development, and simulations can increase your knowledge of composites behavior.

You can also meet us at JEC World in Paris (Mar 14-16) to find out more about how Granta provides a solution for the composite data management challenges faced in high performance engineering enterprises.

3. Restricted substances: new SAE surface treatment specifications

Product stewards and material and process experts must identify which substances are contained in surface treatment specifications in order to comply with product reporting requirements or to avoid risk during product design. They can now benefit from a new connection between the GRANTA MI software and data on Surface Treatment Specifications from SAE. This results from a partnership between Granta, IHS, and SAE, and was identified as a key requirement by members of the Environmental Materials Information Technology (EMIT) Consortium, who guide development of the Granta restricted substances solution.

Users of this solution receive a quarterly update of Granta’s Product Risk data, a comprehensive dataset covering materials, coatings, and associated restricted substance risks. The next update will include a new series of records describing SAE surface treatment Standards. Each record contains a small amount of data from the full Standard and is linked to related coatings, materials, or substances in the Granta database. Users can also follow links to the full SAE Standard, available via the online IHS Standards Expert product.

This linked information makes it easy to explore the materials and related surface treatments used in their products to identify restricted substance risks. They can understand which substances are contained in specifications, enabling obsolescence risk analyses across their materials and processes. They can comply with product reporting requirements (e.g., Article 33 reporting for REACH) on parts that reference these specifications.

4. Join our Material Intelligence Seminars

Join our Material Intelligence Seminars to find out how to raise your organization’s materials IQ through best practice management of information about materials, and how to apply the resulting intelligence in smart product development decisions.

The two-day events start with an Open Seminar for anyone interested in managing or applying materials information, including examples from industry, focus sessions, and software demonstrations. User Meetings are open to users of the GRANTA MI and CES Selector software, with sessions on development progress, feedback, and training. Both elements offer an opportunity to network with peers and to get your questions answered by Granta experts.

Find out more and register below:

• Open Seminar & 5th D-A-CH Granta Design User Meeting, Hamburg, Germany, March 7-9
• Open Seminar & 1st APAC Granta Design User Meeting, Tokyo, Japan, April 19-20
• Open Seminar & 5th French Granta Design User Meeting, Lyon, France, May 10-11.

5. MDMC members rolling out material intelligence to wider community

Los Alamos National Laboratory hosted the 29th regular meeting of the Materials Data Management Consortium Meeting (MDMC) in Los Alamos, NM, USA, on January 17-19. Eighteen member organizations from across Europe and North America attended.

Eight members gave presentations on progress with their implementation roadmaps, including lessons learned, so that the whole community benefited from shared experiences. Several members are using the MI:Scripting Toolkit for Python to enhance data from their corporate database, e.g., by running codes that draw data from the database and then write-back the results of calculations.

Granta presenters led a discussion of integration of GRANTA MI with computational tools, outlined a proposed information architecture for interoperable systems, and introduced a prototype system based on the architecture. Presentations on Additive Manufacturing and Adhesive Joining will be followed up in collaborative workshops. The meeting concluded with a tour of the National Laboratory facility.

6. Speeding up the discovery of new alloys with a ‘virtual library’

Granta recently wrapped up its participation in Accelerated Metallurgy, a European Union collaborative project focused on speeding up discovery of new alloys. Current approaches to manufacturing and testing potential alloys are time-consuming, labour intensive, and expensive – these issues were addressed by the project.

A consortium of 32 partners (including Airbus, Renishaw, and Rolls-Royce) from six technology areas aimed to speed up research into new alloys by marrying simulation, to identify the most promising combinations, with new ‘high throughput’ manufacturing machines, to rapidly manufacture alloy samples for testing.

In his blog, project manager Dr James Goddin explains how Granta created and managed a ‘Virtual Alloy Library’ which captured the results of computational modeling that produced over 14,000 virtual specimens, and facilitated the comparison of this data with experimental results. The project found a number of promising potential alloys which will form the basis of further work by the partners and future projects.

7. Automotive—material intelligence for a demanding industry

If you would like to find out more about Granta’s software and services to meet the materials data management challenges faced by automotive OEMs and suppliers, why not visit us at the SAE World Congress Experience?

We will be in Detroit, USA, on April 4-6 to discuss how materials knowledge plays a crucial role in vehicle design and development: from modeling to support for virtual prototyping, to controlled supplier qualification processes and environmental compliance. We help organizations to manage and integrate material knowledge across the entire engineering lifecycle: streamlining processes and getting vehicles or parts to market faster.

This technology is being further developed and applied via the Automotive Material Intelligence Consortium (AutoMatIC), with members including General Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Jaguar Land Rover.

8. Meet us to discuss support for CAD, CAE, and PLM

Accurate materials property data is essential for product design, analysis, and simulation – and over a busy five-week period in April/May, Granta will be exhibiting at four major US events to show how we help leading engineering enterprises to manage their proprietary materials data.

GRANTA MI:Materials Gateway enables you to access and apply this vital data, quickly and traceably, within your CAD, CAE, or PLM software. We provide materials support to users of software including CATIA, Abaqus/CAE, NX, Teamcenter, Creo, and Windchill.

Contact us to arrange a meeting at these events:

• COE Annual PLM Experience and TechniFair, Orlando, FL, April 23-27
• Siemens PLM Connection Americas, Indianapolis, IN, May 8-11
• Science in the Age of Experience, Boston, MA, May 15-18
• LiveWorx, Boston, MA, May 22-25

9. Training and video tip

Upcoming CES Selector and GRANTA MI training

GRANTA MI Training sessions are held on the second Tuesday of the month. CES Selector Training is held on the first Tuesday of alternate months.

The next free, online sessions are:

Video tip—GRANTA MI:Explore

In each Granta Material News we link to information that helps users to get more from Granta software. In this extract from February’s GRANTA MI training session, we look at some of the new enhancements in MI:Explore, including FEA exports, automated report generation, and curve comparisons.

10. Come and meet us at upcoming events

Meet us at these events and conferences, or sign up for our webinars.

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

International HQ: Granta Design, Rustat House, 62 Clifton Road, Cambridge, CB1 7EG, UK www.grantadesign.com