ASM International and Granta Design recently unveiled an information-management system designed to give aerospace engineers clear insight into previously unmanageable amounts of materials data. GRANTA MI is an enterprise-wide software system for the creation, tracking, qualification and management of materials information.
Historically, critical materials information has not been readily available to aerospace engineers due to inconsistencies in data storage methods (paper reports, spreadsheet files), and information loss as engineers retire. In 2002, the Material Data Management Consortium was formed to develop a data management system that would serve as a single, unified storage capability for all materials knowledge in an aerospace organization, bridging the gap between materials groups and design engineers.
The resulting software system is an off-the-shelf central engineering database that not only contains typical material property information, but also entire response histories, all associated pedigree information, as well as related applications, failure analysis and reference documents.
“Our members didn’t want another database that would be a ‘black hole’ for information, they wanted a tool they could use for real knowledge capture and discovery,” said Stan Theobald, managing director, ASM International. “With GRANTA MI, engineers and designers can retrieve, analyze and utilize data in ways never before possible.”
Now available to the aerospace community at large, GRANTA MI has already been installed and tested at some MDMC member sites, including NASA Glenn Research Center. “The time required for data reduction and analysis has been reduced from hours or days to minutes depending upon the type of experiment being processed,” said NASA’s Dr. Steven Arnold.