Granta Design has announced a new release of GRANTA MI™, the leading system for managing, analyzing, and applying materials information in engineering enterprises. GRANTA MI 1.3 has been optimized through collaboration with top engineering organizations, ensuring that its new features address business-critical issues in key industry sectors.

New data management capabilities further smooth the flow of information from materials testing labs into design and analysis. These features are prioritized and tested by Material Data Management Consortium members including NASA, Rolls-Royce, GE – Aviation, Honeywell, and Northrop Grumman. One such improvement is the automated capture and updating of relationships between material test data records. This is vital in sectors such as aerospace and medical devices where organizations must maintain and trace an accurate pedigree for data.

Manufacturing businesses must also apply materials information to make and implement business decisions. They use GRANTA MI's Enterprise Materials Optimizer (MI:EMO) to develop and apply materials strategies that avoid cost, comply with environmental regulations, and improve product performance. MI:EMO, first released in 2006, is developed with guidance from the Materials Strategy Forum, a new collaboration including manufacturers such as Emerson Electric. The technology has been refined to create a robust tool validated through use in initial customer environments. MI:EMO is compelling for any organization that needs to consider materials selection or substitution.

Making the right design and business decisions also requires the right information. GRANTA MI 1.3 accesses new or enhanced reference data for: aerospace alloys, nuclear and chemical engineering materials, thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs), medical plastics, and eco-design. Price data for over 3,000 materials has been updated using an improved price model.

"GRANTA MI is unique in its ability to provide a comprehensive range of materials information solutions to engineering businesses," comments Dr David Cebon, Managing Director of Granta Design. "By working closely with our customers, we've delivered advances in many areas in GRANTA MI 1.3. Whether you simply want to access materials reference information, have more complex data management needs, or want to optimize your materials strategy, GRANTA MI now provides even more help."

Details of key new features in GRANTA MI 1.3 are:

- MI:EMO identifies materials that meet specific functions, objectives, and constraints in product design. It ranks performance for your specific application relative to a reference material - a very useful tool when considering materials substitutions.

- 'Smart links' help to manage the relationships between data. For example, as lab test data is captured, GRANTA MI can recognize a reference to the batch of material being tested and link the test results to that material batch in the GRANTA MI database. Such links are updated automatically if data changes.

- New data handling and display features make it easier to interact with the complex graphical and functional data typical of material properties.

- Updated reference information: a new data module offering the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel code (materials for nuclear and conventional energy and chemical plants); updated MMPDS-02 aerospace alloys data (formerly Mil-Handbook-5); new data for thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs), material prices, medical plastics and eco-properties.