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Comments on the Testing and Management of Plastics Material Data 

by DatapointLabs6,670 views

Plastics appeared as design materials of choice about 30 years ago. They brought with them huge design challenges because their multi-variable, non-linear nature was not well understood by engineers trained to work in a linear elastic world. We outline a 20 year journey accompanying our customers in their efforts to understand and simulate these remarkable materials to produce the highly reliable plastic products of today. We discuss challenges related to processes such as injection molding vs. blow-molding; coping with filled plastics; the difficulties of modeling polymers for crash applications. We include our latest findings related to volumetric yield in polymers and its relationship to failure. We describe the material database technology that was created to store this kind of multi-variable data and the analytical tools created to help the CAE engineer understand and use plastics material data.

Hubert Lobo. CARHS Automotive CAE Grand Challenge. 2014.

ANSYSAbaqusAutomotiveBlow MoldingDIGIMATHigh Speed TestingInjection MoldingLS-DYNAMoldex3DMoldflowNonlinear Material ModelsPAM-CRASHPlasticsPresentationsStructural AnalysisUniversal CrashUniversal MoldingUniversal Structural

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DatapointLabs

DatapointLabs Technical Center for Materials is a US-based center of excellence for the measurement of physical properties of materials needed for product development, CAE, and R&D. With our testing services and software for materials, we help companies build enduring data collections that accurately represent the materials used in their products.

To date, more than 30,000 materials have flowed through the laboratory, providing data for over 1,200 companies around the world, including automotive, aerospace, appliance, biomedical, consumer products, electronics, and material supplier verticals. DatapointLabs offers TestPaks to provide CAE-ready material properties data for most major simulation software packages.

In 2018, DatapointLabs joined the Applus+ Group, a worldwide leader the testing, inspection and certification sector. In 2020, DatapointLabs celebrated 25 years of putting materials into product design.

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