Post on 20-Apr-2018
• Save time, reduce risk,
and support innovation
with a single, reliable,
easy-to-use source of
corporate materials data
• Implement best practice
as defi ned by leading
energy and nuclear
organizations, meeting
key requirements such
as traceability & security
• Integrate access to
in-house test, QA, and
design data with leading
references such as
ASME BPV Code
• Empower your materials
scientists & engineers by
dramatically improving
the capture, analysis,
and deployment of
critical data
Relevant products &
services:
• GRANTA MI
• Aerospace & Energy
Data Series
• CES Selector
• Granta Services
Example customers:
• AWE
• GE - Energy
• Los Alamos National
Labs
• Oak Ridge National Labs
• Toshiba Corporation
• Westinghouse
Electric Company
Energy generation, whether from fossil fuels, wind, or nuclear, can place
substantial demands on materials. The same is true of other nuclear engineering
applications—for example, in medicine, defense, and research. Materials must
meet requirements for strength, fatigue, and other mechanical and thermal
properties reliably over many years, sometimes under extreme conditions.
It is essential that materials engineers and designers have the right information
and apply it effectively to make the right materials and process choices. But it
can be diffi cult to manage in-house test and QA data effi ciently, and to retain
and re-use materials knowledge, particularly when projects may run for decades.
Yet such information management is vital—both to ensure ‘traceability’ of design
decisions for regulatory purposes and to enable the best results in maintenance
and new design. Granta can help.
Industry overview
www.grantadesign.com
Example solutions for energy and nuclear
Managing mission-critical data
Materials data is mission-critical in conventional power (e.g., developing next-
generation coal-fi red power stations); nuclear applications (for energy, research,
and defense); and renewable energy (for example, composite materials for wind
turbines). You need to capture and retain data from sources such as materials tests
and quality assurance. You need to deploy up-to-date, accurate data to designers
and engineers in a secure, controlled, but easily usable manner. And data must
be fully ‘traceable’. The Materials Data Management Consortium, a group of top
aerospace, defense, and energy enterprises, works with Granta to develop a best-
practice approach to these challenges, embodied in the GRANTAMI™ software
system.
Reference data for energy and nuclear
Reference data on materials properties is often required in design or analysis. This
information must be drawn from reliable, traceable sources. Often, these sources
require regulatory approval. Granta provides easy, cost-effective, enterprise-wide
access to key references such the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code materials
and NIMS creep and fatigue data. GRANTA MI even enables access to these data
sources via your CAE, FEA or other third-party software.
Eco design and eco regulations
Every engineering organization must now design with environmental regulations
such as REACH in mind. Eco objectives, such as reducing wastes and emissions,
are also increasingly important. Materials are central to these issues, because
regulation constrains what materials can be used, and because materials
properties determine much of the environmental impact of products. Granta
provides software tools and reference data to help address environmental issues
during design.
Energy and Nuclear
Case Study: Westinghouse Electric Company
Paula Freyer is a Fellow Engineer with the Westinghouse Electric Company. She has
been leading a project to optimize the management of the organization’s materials
data, which she described at a Granta seminar in 2008. The following is extracted
from the seminar report.
The history of Westinghouse Electric and the nuclear industry provides
important context for materials information management requirements in the
sector. The nuclear industry underwent a 30-year decline from its heyday in
the early 1970s. It is now in the midst of a renaissance, as countries adopt
their energy policies in the light of climate change, volatile oil prices, and the
need for energy independence. Demand for new nuclear power stations is
rising, and the industry is seeking to extend the life of existing facilities—many
of which are coming to the end of their original 40-year lifespan.
This is good news for the industry, but also poses a challenge. It needs to scale up
quickly. But, with low recruitment levels for the last several decades, it is also set
to lose much of its workforce and expertise. 35% of the engineers in the nuclear
industry are eligible for retirement in the next 5 years. These facts are making
organizations re-evaluate how they capture, store, and access knowledge in
their design and maintenance processes—including materials knowledge.
A major corporate asset at Westinghouse is its long history of materials
research, and the resulting rich materials data resource, comprising tens of
thousands of laboratory reports, test results, and documents. The challenge
is that, in common with most engineering enterprises, this resource is spread
across fi ling cabinets, discs, computer fi les, proprietary databases, and
handbooks. This makes it hard to fi nd and share materials information across
the materials team and the hundreds of engineers who may require data, for
example as input to their analysis codes. And knowledge about what data is
available, and where to access it, will dissipate as materials experts retire or
move on.
The risk of losing data or duplicating tests that have already been done
represents a major cost in the nuclear industry. Samples with suffi cient
irradiation exposure to represent, for example, a component in a 40-year
old nuclear reactor, are extremely rare. Tests must evaluate a wide range
of parameters, and these tests are logistically complex—requiring highly
specialized hot cell laboratory testing facilities and highly skilled radiologically
trained personnel.
These are the reasons behind a new project to give Westinghouse Electric
a ‘21st century materials data management system’. The goal is to create
a server-based system, accessible only on the company’s intranet, which
becomes the single, central place to store materials data. The system will
enable anyone with a web browser to fi nd key materials data intuitively and to
compare materials, plot curves, and prepare reports. Data will be exportable
to Excel and to key CAD and FEA codes. Key reference information“for
example, the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code data, will be included.
Security and traceability features are vital.
Westinghouse has defi ned a four-stage process to implement such a system
corporation-wide. The fi rst stage is a data management pilot project, which is
currently being implemented using the GRANTA MI system”selected because
it meets all of the requirements outlined above.
Westinghouse Electric Company, and the nuclear industry in general, offers a
particularly compelling example of the need for effective materials information
management to help preserve materials knowledge and fully leverage
investment in expensive materials testing.
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© 2012 Granta Design Ltd. GRANTA MI and CES Selector are trademarks of Granta Design Ltd.
Industry overview
Further information
We can help with almost any problem
relating to materials information.
In addition to the tools described
here, our CES Selector software is a
unique tool for materials and process
selection and substitution.
For complete information on Granta’s
solutions in this area see:
www.grantadesign.com/
solutions/energy/
EN-12-07
Data stored, analyzed, and viewed within
GRANTA MI—such as the materials property
on this datasheet (front)—can be easily
accessed and applied within computer-aided
design & engineering tools (back).
GRANTA MI captures all of your critical
materials information in a single, shared
system, enabling materials scientists to
analyze properties and publish certifi ed
information for use by engineers. In this
screenshot a user has searched for a
material and is graphically viewing key
multidimensional data.