Aerospace Materials Data Management Helps Engineers Design, Certify and Audit Aircraft | ANSYS Blog
July 11th, 2019
Understanding the properties of aircraft materials is mission-critical to the aerospace and defence industry. Engineers need complex aerospace materials data that are often scattered across multiple datasets — lost in a sea of digital or physical filing systems. Not only does this make it difficult to optimise and maintain a product, but it makes it impractical to audit designs and products for restricted materials.
Engineers need materials data management software that ensures fast, reliable access to the data they need to meet weight, cost and environmental and structural goals. The software has to:
- Capture all relevant data
- Connect related items
- Support calculation of properties
- Deliver data in the formats needed for analysis and simulation
- Keeping this information within siloed databases isn’t productive
ANSYS GRANTA MI solves these challenges. It offers a means to gather, store and access materials data, and makes it easier for engineers to ensure that an aircraft’s design is safe, optimal and efficient.
The Benefits of a Centralised Aerospace Materials Data Management System During Design
A centralised aircraft materials data management system is fundamental to the design and development of aerospace and defence equipment.
For instance, materials engineers looking to qualify new aerospace composites for light weighting will need to store hundreds of thousands of coupon test data. Storing this information — and all of its interconnections — in GRANTA MI greatly speeds up the analysis process. A “gold source” materials data system also avoids unnecessary repeating of tests completed in the past.
GRANTA MI will also ensure simulation analysts can access the data they need, regardless of storage location. For instance, engineers can search materials data stored in GRANTA MI from within ANSYS Mechanical or ANSYS Workbench. As a result, they can ensure that the materials properties used in simulations are accurate and consistent throughout the organization.
How Operations Benefit from a Centralised Aerospace Materials Data Management System
During the long operational lifecycle of an aircraft, any number of regulatory changes can pop up. To ensure compliance with restricted substance regulations, engineers need to know which materials were used to create each part of the aircraft and the substance risks associated with these materials.
Failure to comply with these restrictions could result in fines, safety concerns, consumer confidence issues and more.
Performing an audit to find all the restricted substance risks associated with a part could take a team hours or days to complete. However, with GRANTA MI, this process can be done by an individual in a few minutes.
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This blog was originally posted on ANSYS’ website here.