Multi-scale Composite Material Selection Platform with a Seamless Integration of Material Models and Multidisciplinary Design Framework.

Project Information

COMPOSELECTOR

Grant agreement ID: 721105

DOI

10.3030/721105

Project closed

EC signature date 10 November 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 December 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Advanced materials

Total cost

€ 3 904 186,03

EU contribution

€ 3 904 186,03

Coordinated by

LUXEMBOURG INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Luxembourg

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - COMPOSELECTOR (Multi-scale Composite Material Selection Platform with a Seamless Integration of Material Models and Multidisciplinary Design Framework.)

Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2020-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The mission of H2020 COMPOSELECTOR project is to develop a Business Decision Support System (BDSS) to support the complex decision process involved in the selection and design of polymer-matrix composites (PMCs).
This is achieved by means of an open integration platform that enables interoperability and information management of materials models and data and connects a rich ‘materials modeling layer’ with industry-standard business process models.

The specific Scientific and Technological objectives of the project are defined and summarised as follows:

Objective I: Tailored Knowledge Apps to support decision-makers: Typically, the tools will need to be presented in web-based and mobile environments. To meet this objective, COMPOSELECTOR builds ‘Apps’ that can support and guide their managerial decision situations. The support and guidance will be strengthened by advanced analytics tools, presenting integrated knowledge from materials modeling, business tools, and databases.

Objective II: Provide actionable choices: COMPOSELECTOR has a strong focus on the integration and innovative development of a Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MDO) framework, which will allow for time, resources, and costs saving while increasing performance and functionality.

Objective III: Integrated Materials and Process Modelling: COMPOSELECTOR will develop innovative methodologies to connect existing and future models and how to use them in varying contexts. This will be achieved by: 1- Enriching an integrated materials and manufacturing process modeling framework with metadata schema and semantic interoperability, 2- Methodologies for KPI-driven property calculations, and 3- Implementation of model selection and model adaptivity.

Objective IV: Integration and analytics of structured and unstructured data. COMPOSELECTOR aims at developing a coherent and comprehensive PMCs database and information management system that integrates the materials models with structured and unstructured data from multiple databases containing materials data, commercial data, and information on market trends, pricing, customer needs, and demands.

Objective V: A BDSS validated by Decision Makers: An easy-to-use, cooperative, and inter-disciplinary decision support and selection platform for PMCs that has been tested and validated towards applications in the aerospace sector.

The delivered product of the project is a software system for the reliable selection of composite materials considering multi-scale and multi-field coupled interactions. The pre-existing commercial software tools will represent the starting point for the implementation. The pre-existing software codes will be further developed and integrated during the project with the objective to obtain a mature software system that can be used in an operational context. The project is industry-driven thanks to the significant involvement of the industrial partners. As a consequence, the project will be led by specific industrial needs. This guarantees a stable foundation and reduces the risk of development activities. It also ensures cost-effectiveness because the project will maximally use pre-existing technologies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A prototype BDSS and components have been developed and are publicly available for partners’ access at the web address https://welcome.composelector.eu. The BDSS User Case layer provides a top-level entry point with single sign-on authentication and authorization implemented with state-of-the-art security mechanisms. The business layer of the BDSS supports the definition of business processes and their associated decision rules by using the BPMN and DMN standards respectively. Business processes can be executed with the BDSS process engine. The engine supports user tasks to enable business users to interact with the system to make business decisions. Multiple business actors performing different roles are supported. Business data provenance information and the whole information about the business decisions taken during process execution are kept in persistent storage by the business layer. In this way, evidence about the procedure by which business data were generated and details about the actors that have interacted during business process execution, including the decisions taken by them, can be accessed at any time from the web interface. The COMPOLSECTOR BDSS business layer is composed of four main modules: the business layer web application, the business layer API, the engines, and the model repository. All interaction between the business layer web application and the other components goes through the business layer API, which in this particular case, is used to request business process information from the model repository.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The main innovation relies on the integration of material and process modeling in a business decision system that takes into account: (i) the complexity of composite materials and (ii) the level of industrial expectation through the different end-users and their special requirements inherent to their respective field (KPIs). We identified Eleven (11) major innovative outcomes with special relevance for future exploitation.

Innovation 1: The first project innovative achievement is the prototype COMPOSELECTOR BDSS.
Innovation 2: The conceptual approach to integrate material modeling and business processes by using the well-established standards BPMN and DMN.
Innovation 3: The in-cloud User-Case and business layers applications.
Innovation 4: Materials Modelling Integration and Interoperability Platform MuPIF.
Innovation 5: The developed Data Layer using either proprietary and open database (MongoDB).
Innovation 6: The approach and tool for Models Selection based on graph theory.
Innovation 8: Statistical Microstructure Characterisation and Reconstruction approach and tool.
Innovation 9: The integrated Visual INFORMATION Tool.
Innovation 10: The integrated End-User Cost and Net Present Value (NPV) App.
Innovation 11: The implemented strategy of considering the effects of the manufacturing process in decision-making including model selection.

The market-oriented character of this proposal is justified by the fact that software developers involved in this project can base their work on their mature analysis platform for advanced multi-scale and multi-physic analyses, including pre- and post-processing and interfaces with other commercial codes. Therefore, the economic impact of the project is expected to be considered such as i) reduction of company costs and increased performance and commercial impact based on effective materials models driven business decisions: ii) guidance to companies in developing their strategies with an effective, user-friendly materials models driven business decision system, iii) increased industrial use of existing materials knowledge and effective materials models iv) improved trust of industrial decision-makers in materials modeling and their commercial advantage and v) essential company savings in time and money, especially via the elimination of the need for (some) plant trials. These all will lead to a substantial gain of time, shortening the design and pre-production of composite structures and decreasing the time/cost-to-market, and therefore increase the competitiveness of the European industries.

Composelector BDSS architecture

automatic modelling workflow generation

Example of a business user task in the BDSS

Composelector users-cases

composelector integration and interoperability platform

Composelector BDSS concept

Example of KPIs estimation