This commercial materials education module was developed by M. Ashby and others at the University of Cambridge. It includes software, textbooks, lectures, and exercises.

CITATION: "Granta's CES EduPack." Granta Material Intelligence. Granta Design Limited 2007.

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Cathy:

Incorporating the CES EduPack software in an introductory materials engineering course is very valuable both for students and instructors. I have done this for the past two years at Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA and found that the students responded enthusistically to the use of this software. Current-age college students are most familiar with interactive, computer-based, user friendly, and attractive/colorful learning tools such as the EduPack. A great deal of information is available at the touch of fingertips. The connectivity offered by EduPack between engineering materials, properties, processing characteristics and economics is wonderful. In addition, the data on energy conservation, sustainability, and ecological impact of the materials and manufacturing processes facilitates the development of engineering designs that are based on multiple concurrent design criteria.

The software is able to work with built-in materials databses to generate a list of alternative materials that meet a given set of design requirements and constraints. It is also possible to rank these alternative materials based on any of the customer-specified criteria such as cost, corrosion resistance, weight and so on. For a given material, it is possible to choose an appropriate manufacturing process out of a list of alternatives based on process economics, complexity and component design. The software is able to make graphics that could be incorporated in a report or a research paper. The definitions of the various technical terms and properties are provided and explained well with examples. Original sources of data could be accessed from the soft ware through web-based tools. Application notes provide concise information on the characteristics, properties, advantages, limitations, and applications of each material and manufacturing process contained within the databses.

I start teaching the EduPack by asking the students to make a list of the engineering materials and processes they are familiar with, subsequently teach the Edupack and finally, ask them to make the list again. When the students compare the two lists, they realize the phenomenal growth in their knowledge of the materials- and process- world in just a few weeks!

Dr. Priyadarshan Manohar
Assistant prof., Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, Pa - 15108

I'm the Materials Education Coordinator at Granta Design. I thought I would just update this post with current links in case they are useful to people.

Information about CES EduPack 2011 here

Access 200+ Materials Teaching Resources Here

Incorporating sustainability into the curriculum is a big topic at the moment. So if you want information about what we do in the fields of Low Carbon Power Systems and Eco Design follow the links.

Low Carbon Power

Eco Audit Tool