JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #116 - October 2017 - 22

BUSlNESS strategy

The new technical database for composites

Gilles RocheR, Co-founder,
PieRRe BaRme, Co-founder, data expert,
steven mauRin, Co-founder, software
and web developer
900GPa

omposite materials are
great, but their potential has
not been exploited nearly
enough!
They have extraordinary properties and a huge number of
applications. Most often they are
electrically and thermally insulating, although they can be made
conductive; their mechanical
properties are often oriented, but
can also be isotropic; and they can
serve to produce either millions
of small components or large
one-off parts. They are found in
fields as dissimilar as automotive,
aerospace, energy, and sports &
leisure.

Strengths and weaknesses
However, the field of composites
is also highly complex, subdivided
into many different areas of expertise. The wide range of fibre types,
reinforcement formats, converting processes, and resins available
on the market represents a nearly
unlimited number of combinations. This wealth of attributes
constitutes the appeal of composites, but it is also a weakness:

As composite materials professionals, we believe that composites are outstanding in terms of performance and application ranges. We want to contribute to
the development of the composite industry within the community and beyond.
We want to help engineers and project managers to find relevant, reliable information about composites and to develop new applications and businesses,
by providing them with the right tools to browse and select materials from the
most comprehensive online database.

the information on composite
materials is scattered throughout
the industry, and it is very difficult
for the composite community
to get a bird's-eye view of all the
available possibilities. For engineers and designers who are used
to working with other materials
and who understand that the use
of composites is an opportunity
to reduce weight or integrate
functions, the composite industry
can even appear to be an obscure
milieu full of arcane formulas,
know-how and techniques. In this
case, they often wind up giving up
on these materials and going back
to their "good old" handbook of
metal design.

Technical database
This observation led the three
founders of the Tecknowledge
Sarl startup, based in Switzerland,
to create a technical database
on composites. Called 900GPa
in reference to the ultra-high
tensile modulus of carbon fibre,
the purpose of the database is to
centralize the technical data on
composite materials and make
them accessible to the entire
composite community and to
students, engineers and designers
in all the other industrial fields.

jec composites magazine / N°116 October 2017

Between the three of us, we
have more than thirty years of
experience in composites, and are
100% convinced of the incredible
potential of these materials.
We wish to contribute to their
growth and to the development
of new composite applications by
"demystifying" them and giving
everyone access to the available
data on them.

Free access, free of charge
The business model for the
startup is an unusual one, as it
makes 900GPa freely available
to all users, with no restrictions
on the number of connections or
the length of use. Visitors do not
even need to enter a user name or

Fig 1 : Users can enter
their search as a text.
The integrated search
engine shows a list of
products whose datasheet
contain this text. In this
example, 2138 datasheets
containing the text "fiber"
have been found.

password. To finance the development of 900GPa, the startup
is counting on sponsoring by
material suppliers. The business
model is a win-win situation for
everyone: users can easily surf the
database without constraints or
limits, and the sponsors can gain
in visibility, establish new contacts
and benefit from the reliable, upto-date image that we are building
for 900GPa.
The database includes a search
engine that displays results for
the keywords or numerical values
that users enter. The sponsors'
products are highlighted, but the
database is exhaustive, containing
both the market's well-known listed products, and niche products.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #116 - October 2017