QuesTek Innovations has launched its ICMD digital design platform for materials engineering and the development of novel materials. ICMD enables digital transformation for the materials design and optimization process through a SaaS offering and deployment in private corporate clouds.
ICMD is a digital platform to transform the traditional experiment-based, trial-and-error process of materials engineering. Similar to how CAD revolutionized the architecture industry, ICMD dramatically speeds up the process of developing and qualifying new materials by combining a computational physics-based approach with insights from more than 600 QuesTek materials engineering engagements since 1997 for clients such as NASA, SpaceX, Apple, GM, Boeing, and Audi.
“Materials have become critical in nearly every sector of our society,” said Bill Mahoney, COO of QuesTek. “Many products have improved to the point that materials are now the constraining factor for performance. ICMD empowers innovative manufacturers and producers to directly integrate materials engineering into product development.”
While using ICMD, materials engineers can see how changes in the composition and manufacturing process or other variables will impact a material’s structure and properties, such as strength, toughness, corrosion resistance, and fatigue. They can also start with the material performance that is required and then identify the specific elemental combinations and processing steps that will produce them.
QuesTek has spent the past year using ICMD internally to digitally enable service engagements and solve materials challenges for clients. Enhanced productivity by simply using the software has enabled QuesTek’s commercial materials engineering and consulting business to grow by 70% in one year.
Early test and evaluation feedback from a leading research institution and top-tier manufacturers in the aerospace and automotive industries has also helped prepare the ICMD initial release. QuesTek provides hands-on support for organizations using ICMD and continues to offer full-service materials design engagements as well as materials consulting.
“To see the materials design process that QuesTek pioneered and the knowledge we have acquired over the past 25 years captured in a software product really opens the future of this industry,” said Jason Sebastian, president of QuesTek. “ICMD empowers organizations and individuals to engage more efficiently in materials design than ever before — and I think we’re going to see a flood of materials innovations as a result.”
QuesTek
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