Altair Launches Material Data Center: A High‑Fidelity, Comprehensive Database for Simulation-Driven Design

Altair, a global leader in data analytics, simulation, and high‑performance computing, has unveiled the Altair Material Data Center – a cutting‑edge, high‑fidelity database that consolidates validated material data for plastics, metals, and composites. The platform offers full data lineage and seamless integration with Altair’s flagship solvers and other industry‑standard tools.

Material selection is a critical determinant of product performance. To support this, Altair has invested heavily in material modeling and recently acquired M‑Base, a world‑renowned supplier of plastic material data. The acquisition brings M‑Base’s expansive plastic database into the Altair ecosystem, enabling designers, engineers, and scientists to evaluate structural, fatigue, fluid/thermal, electromagnetic, and manufacturing‑specific properties through a single, intuitive interface or directly within simulation and optimization workflows.

James R. Scapa, Altair’s founder and CEO, says, “The Material Data Center delivers another powerful tool that helps our customers save time, cut costs, and accelerate innovation throughout the entire product lifecycle. Our partnership with material manufacturers, strengthened by the M‑Base acquisition, expands our reach in the plastics market.”

The Material Data Center offers:

• Comprehensive material information management – access to verified data sheets, raw data, and solver cards with traceability back to the supplier, ensuring consistency across teams.
• Flexible accessibility and scalability – available as a SaaS solution hosted by Altair or as an on‑premise deployment to safeguard proprietary information.
• Intuitive, web‑based interface – browse, search, view, and compare materials effortlessly.
• Simulation‑centric data views – generate solver‑ready material cards for Altair’s and other major solvers with a few clicks.
• Open API integration – plug the data center into any desktop solver for a seamless workflow.
• Broad, deep partnerships – close collaboration with material manufacturers guarantees up‑to‑date, high‑quality data.
• Collaborative curation – experts can review and refine data before it is published, ensuring enterprise‑wide reliability.

Subhransu S. Mohapatra, material data leader at SABIC, remarks, “We’re thrilled to have SABIC’s polymer data integrated into the Altair Material Data Center. Our customers can now tap into SABIC’s engineering data to enhance simulation fidelity and manufacturing planning.”

Dr. Changwei Lian, senior researcher at Baosteel Group Corp., adds, “Baosteel is proud to partner with Altair, embedding our material data into the digital development cycle of automotive users. The inclusion of our high‑quality data in the Material Data Center provides quick, reliable access to the latest research and performance metrics across CAE tools.”

With the Material Data Center, Altair continues to empower engineers to make data‑driven material decisions, accelerating product development and elevating performance.