Granta Design, providers of materials information technology, has unveiled updates to its environmental data for materials.
According to the company, Granta's MaterialUniverse data module provides property data on thousands of engineering materials - complete and normalised, enabling comparison and selection for metals, polymers, composites, ceramics and natural materials.
Systematic coverage includes, for example, all commonly-used metal alloys and the full range of filled and unfilled engineering plastics. Granta adds that engineering and economic data is complemented by eco data, including properties for estimating environmental impacts (eg energy to produce a material, CO2 footprint, processing energies) and information that helps 'design for the environment' (eg, recycling data).
"This comes from combining an extensive list of respected sources - examples include ecoinvent, Plastics Europe Eco-profiles, and the University of Bath 'Inventory of Carbon & Energy' (ICE). Where no data is available, properties are modelled, avoiding 'holes' in the property data," says Granta.
"For data based on reference sources, new traceability features mean users see which sources and values were used for each data point. This gives further confidence in the quality of the data and enables greater understanding as it is applied."
The organisation notes that one source for MaterialUniverse is the ecoinvent database from the Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, widely regarded as a standard for Life Cycle Inventory data. Granta software users wishing to directly access ecoinvent data can now use a new 'ecoinvent Key Materials Indicators' data module. This provides the most relevant indicators for making material choices (embodied energy, carbon footprint, water usage, resource consumption) for the materials covered by ecoinvent. These can be searched, browsed, plotted, and compared as an integral part of Granta's reference data library.
"Granta aims to provide the most complete and well-structured coverage of the properties of engineering materials, combining all of the factors that must be considered when designing products." said Patrick Coulter, COO at Granta.
"For nearly 20 years, this has included environmental properties and, with these latest developments, we make the pedigree of our eco data more transparent for users and enrich the data by integrating another very well-respected data source," he concludes.
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