Granta Design announced the release of CES EduPack 2015, the latest version of the materials education resource, used at over a thousand universities and colleges worldwide. The 2015 release focuses on enhancements that engage engineering, science, and design students by placing their learning about materials and processes in a real-world context. An updated lifecycle analysis tool enables students to consider both cost and environmental trade-offs in design. New additive manufacturing resources provide insight into this much talked-about area of manufacture. More in-depth materials data supports advanced projects. And updates to the Sustainable Development Edition help students to explore the full range of issues surrounding sustainability in design and engineering. These features build on CES EduPack’s existing comprehensive database of materials and process information, powerful materials property plotting tools, and range of supporting lectures, projects, videos, and exercises. These resources were developed by Professor Mike Ashby of Cambridge University, the team at Granta Design, and collaborators around the world.
The Enhanced Eco Audit tool builds on Granta’s existing tool for quickly calculating the predicted CO2 footprint and embodied energy of a product, adding the ability to report on economic cost. By allowing side-by-side comparison of the environmental and economic impact of design decisions, students can achieve a more in-depth understanding of all the factors that contribute to making design decisions.
CES EduPack 2015 includes new additive manufacturing process records, allowing this ‘hot-topic’ manufacturing technique to be easily integrated into teaching of materials and processes. As well as providing an overview of a number of different additive manufacturing processes, cost data allows students to explore the economic advantages or disadvantages of using this technique at varying levels of production.
Support for advanced projects, such as final year or ‘Capstone’ design projects, has been expanded, with a number of enhancements which provide more detailed, realistic information and tools to engage advanced students. This includes an updated list of materials producers connected to real-world material specifications, more sophisticated filtering when selecting materials for a specific engineering application, improved exporters to FEA packages for simulation projects, and the latest alloy and plastics data from authoritative sources: MMPDS, CAMPUS, and Prospector Plastics.
The Sustainable Development Edition features improved information covering the environmental, social, and geophysical factors that can lead to supply risk for so-called ‘critical materials’, such as the rare earth elements. Students can instantly find which engineering materials contain these materials, exploring the practical consequences of supply disruptions. Updated magnetic materials data provides further insight, since the availability of critical elements often causes sustainability problems for these commercially-important materials.
Additional improvements include new interactive help resources, improved elements data including crystal structure diagrams, and more resources available in Spanish, German, and French. Taken together, these updates help make CES EduPack 2015 a powerful teaching resource, with the tools, data, and additional resources to help students understand real-world materials engineering.
“Our aim with CES EduPack 2015 was to provide educators with a tool that could support their materials-based teaching in a way that reflected engineering realities”, commented Marc Fry, Director of Granta’s Education Division. “This release helps to integrate the many concerns that impact modern materials science, from sustainability issues to environmental and economic decisions, all conveniently linked together to allow students to explore the world of materials in an engaging, interactive way.”
