March 31, 2017
DIMECC HYBRIDS and BSA programs bring material research and design to a new level by digitalizing materials R&D. The digital design concept takes full advantage of novel materials. The ultimate goal is to enable to product specific design of materials, and exploiting detailed models in design of material solutions and solving materials related problems in products.
Traditionally material development problems have been solved based on case experiments. The computational modelling and simulation, enabled by rapidly increasing computer capacity, the new material modelling tools and the improved micro and nano level characterization techniques, offers routes to systematic material development by prediction of material performance and optimization.
In DIMECC HYBRIDS and BSA programs novel design tools for discovering, developing and deploying materials in a virtual environment have been developed.
The development of new breakthrough material solutions for industrial applications requires a deeper fundamental understanding of material processing, structures, properties and behavior, a systematic approach to material development and tools for material structural optimization and design.
With the help of digitalization, the real material performance can be investigated and the material and product properties and performance can be optimized. This results in shorter product design and improved predictability.
The impacts have internationally been acknowledged via industry use cases as 50 % shorter time-to-market of material solutions and decrease of the affiliated development costs (on average to 50-60% of trial-and-error approaches). Moreover, by digitalizing material development companies can systematically drive the solution of problems persisting in developing better materials and products and discovering innovative solutions. This enables the development of better products with increased reliability and longer lifespan and totally new breakthrough materials.
