Global Metals Specifications

Updates to the Global Metals Specifications data table, part of the Advanced Materials – Metals data bundle.

Updated data from StahlDat SX

• 2637 records updated with the latest StahlDat SX data, including structural steels, dual phase, and stainless steels.
• Updates to carbon equivalent values.
• 40 new records, including 14 structural steels and 18 electrical steels.

New estimated data for key properties to support basic simulation

• Estimates for Density, Young’s Modulus, Poisson’s Ratio, and Tangent Modulus have been added to the database, covering approximately 80000 records. These have been generated using models that are partly data-driven but also incorporate materials knowledge, such as composition–modulus trends, phase behavior, and alloy class distinctions, to ensure physically meaningful outputs. These estimates enable reliable early-stage simulations even when experimental data is not available.
• Additionally, a reliability score is provided for the key estimates, ranging from 1 (most reliable) to 5 (least reliable), allowing users to filter data by an expected accuracy and to make informed decisions on the suitability of the data for their simulations.

Improvements to the database look and feel

• Record names have been standardized to be a concatenation of alloy group, grade name, and number and specification, plus any additional information needed to make the record unique. The common name of the alloy (if it differs from the grade name and number) is also included in the record name to allow easier understanding of a list of records.
• Additional Chinese and Japanese specifications have been added to the Equivalent / similar grades attribute for nearly 8000 records, and the formatting of this attribute has been made more consistent for a further 19000 records.
• Additional record links are added to improve connectivity with other major metals databases. By matching UNS and Spec/Grade numbers across multiple sources, over 3700 and over 3000 new record links are established with the JAHM and ASME databases, respectively. These additional links make it easier to find related metal records across databases, simplifying material comparison and selection.

Maintenance

Approximately 10000 outdated or low-value records were removed from the ferrous, non-ferrous, and stainless steel folders in the database. These included legacy entries with unknown manufacturers, specification summaries or registration records lacking numerical data, duplicate and near-empty records, obsolete manufacturer specifications, and records containing redundant specification information.

New export capability

Material card exporters for the following LS-DYNA models have been added:

• MAT_001 – Isotropic hypoelastic material
• MAT_020 – Material for rigid body assignment
• MAT_024 – Isotropic elasto-plastic material

Default unit system is mm–g–ms, with stress and density values scaled to align with LS-DYNA’s native unit system. In the ‘mm–g–ms (Consistent)’ unit system:

• All stress quantities are exported in GPa
• Density is exported in kg/mm³

MAT_024 export details:

• When available, a true stress vs. plastic strain curve is exported to define plasticity.
• If the curve is unavailable, ideal plasticity is assumed using only the yield stress (no hardening).
• Elongation at failure is exported where available.

Where YS, UTS, and Elongation are all available, MAT_024 is enabled using Tangent modulus calculated from Yield Strength (YS), Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS), and Elongation. This approach allows MAT_024 to be used even in the absence of a full true stress–plastic strain curve, by assuming linear elastic followed by linear hardening.