As part of the ongoing quest to create a ‘rich’ virtual product development environment – we can expect to begin seeing more and more information to be connected with the virtual product model. One of the areas that promises to gain momentum in the near term is in the area of materials. Only by more closely integrating materials data with CAE tools can we hope to more accurately predict the behavior and performance of a part or a system under a variety of conditions.
Looking at Matereality and its efforts in this area, I have to admit that I am very impressed with the direction that they’re going. As the company itself explains, “users of Matereality® might work in the automotive, biomedical, consumer goods, appliances, defense industries. A typical client enterprise is heavily vested in virtual product development technologies (VPD), with global collaborative efforts, using many materials. A single user of diverse materials who needs access to data on material behavior on a constant basis could also greatly benefit from Matereality.”
Certainly for the community of manufacturers and suppliers served by CAx/PLM providers like IBM/Dassault, UGS, and PTC (as well as those migrating in this direction, such as SAP), this ‘next generation’ virtual product development environment only promises to become even more critical in the years ahead.
It therefore only makes good sense for these organizations to be paying close attention to what companies like Matereality are up to. Not only because Matereality is making available a rich database of materials data, but because it is also making it easier to access and use that data with its recently introduced Material Data Mining Robot (MIRO), a search tool designed to mine data collections for relevant data – data, for example, that would be suitable for a specific CAE simulation or a material specification.
It's all part of the company's CAE-friendly strategy. In recent months, Matereality has announced partnerships with both ABAQUS and ANSYS. And my expectation is that they don't intend to stop there.
