TEXTILES.ORG
Due to resource scarcity and intense pressure to become carbon neutral, companies in industries like textile, packaging and construction are looking for alternative materials to replace unsustainable ones and improve the performance of their products through new, improved designs.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has expanded the application of its Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) toolbox ProperTune beyond hard materials like metals to now model and design soft materials like wood, polymers and plastics. This allows companies to cut down product development time by at least 50 percent, decrease cost elements of product development, reduce environmentally harmful materials and design entirely new materials that perform better. The expanded use of ICME makes it fast and economically viable for the replacement of an increased number of unsustainable materials while providing improved material performance.
ProperTune is a collection of tools that combines multiscale physics-based modeling and AI with a data-driven approach to create microstructurally accurate materials and load in realistic conditions. ProperTune provides a highly in-depth analysis of the customer’s product and models how different environmental elements and stressors affect the product.
Working in a fully digital environment to find more preferable and better performing alternatives for undesirable ingredients is dramatically faster compared to the traditional trial-and-error methodology. In addition, the durability along with other key performance parameters of the new material can also be verified in the virtual environment.
VTT is already working with customers looking for alternatives for their soft materials.