DESIGN CONSIDERATION: MATERIAL SELECTION

One of the key steps in design process is the material selection which is instrumental in design calculation and drawing.

Remarks:
There are more than 40,000 currently useful metallic alloys and of nearly same number of non-metallic engineering materials. This is what makes the material selection a tricky and tedious exercise. HOW TO PROCEED FOR SELECTING MATERIALS? Factors influencing material selection: 1. Survey the Past experience and then decide. Reason: What has worked before is an obvious solution. Drawback: It may not provide optional solution. 2. Study carefully the situation and circumstances in which the design will be expected to work. Major considerations remain: (A) Part performance under load environment Strength Consideration Stiffness Consideration Forms the mathematical basis of material selection. (B) Part manufacturing Casting Consideration Dictated by tolerance consideration for performance Machining Consideration Others 3. Easy availability of materials (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) Number of sources of material supply State of future availability Availability of materials in needed form Limitations on size & tolerance on available materials Variability in properties

4. Cost Consideration Material selection comes down to buying properties at best available price. The number of possible combinations of the above consideration is very large and that is what makes the material selection a tough proposition.

For instance, In many advanced aerospace, particularly missiles, materials are subjected to be limits of their properties. Weight reduction remains the major consideration For commercial products cost consideration dominates over performance requirements. A design of popular use is done only for a limited life with the understanding that by that time the technology and users taste will change. Material cost and manufacturing cost vary sector to sector. Automobile: Material cost= 40% of the total Manufacturing cost=60% of the total Material cost is nearly 67% of the manufacturing cost.

Shipbuilding:
Material cost is about 45% of manufacturing cost.

MATERIAL PROPERTY SPECTRUM

It serves as checklist in selecting materials to be assured that no important properties are overlooked.

1. Physical properties
Reflect material properties pertaining to interaction of the material with various forms of energy. Density Boiling pt. Color Melting pt. etc

2. Mechanical properties:
Reflect material properties displayed under a load environment. Yield strength Tensile properties Tensile/ultimate strength Hardness Toughness Fatigue strength /Endurance limit Creep strength etc.

3. Fabrication/Technologies properties:
Reflect the characteristic of the material with which it can easily undergo a manufacturing process. Machinability Malleability Forgeability Castability Formability Hardenability etc. Attempt has been made to quantity these properties in terms of Mechanical, Physical, Chemical properties.

4. Chemical Properties:
Those characteristics that relate to the structure of a material and its formation from our elements: Metals Ceramics Composition Composition Porosity Microstructure Grain Size Phases Crystal structure Grain Size Corrosion resistance

5. Thermal Properties
Conductivity Specific heat Coeff. Of thermal expansion Fire resistance

6. Electricity Properties
Conductivity Dielectric constant Hysteresis

The way material properties enter the design:

The material properties usually enter design consideration through specifications-Performance specifications & product specifications.

Performance Specifications outline the basic functional requirements of the product in terms of load,
environment service condition etc. That is, these specifications set out the basic parameters from which design can be developed. Product Specifications: define conditions under which the components of the designs are purchased or manufactured.

Material Selection Process

For material selection there is seldom a clear cut objective function. It involves decision making amidst multiple constraints. The major steps in material selection process are: 1. Based on performance & product specifications identify the material properties from the property spectrum. 2. Screening of candidate materials : Based on the material properties data (step-1), list of most promising materials is prepared.

3. Selection from candidate materials: The candidate materials are analyzed in view of product performance, cost, fabricability and availability in trade-off manner and the best material is selected for the application. Note: There are a number of methods in vogue called material evaluation techniques. 4. Development of design Data : The key material properties for the selected material is gathered from literature or experimentally obtained to initiate design calculation.

Selection from candidate materials:

There is no well developed & widely accepted methodology for material selection due to the involved complexibility of the comparisons and trade-offs. Also, not much research and scholarly efforts have been made to the problem. Methods employed are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Cost vs. performance indices (simply, cost-performance index) Weighted property indices Value analysis Benefit-cost analysis

Cost-performance Index method

This technique relates a critical performance parameter with that of cost through an index called costperformance index. A performance parameter of a part may be one of the important design specifications such as Specific weight Specific strength-tensile, flexural or buckling Stiffness/rigidity Volume Cost-performance index is simply defined as the cost per unit performance parameter. Based on cost-performance indices, we select suitable candidate material. Note: (i) Here cost is inclusive cost which include cost of the material plus its fabrication and maintenance (ii) Cost-performance index should generally be expressed in terms of material properties and should be independent of geometric dimensions.

Illustration:
(A) Let the performance parameter is load carrying capacity of the part under design while in tension since mechanical part is designed with yield strength as design strength. Hence part in tension with cross-sectional area A, then for all materials (1) Let the length be & the part is of circular x-section (dia.= d )

Volume of the part=

Weight of the part=

Cost of the part = From (1) & (2), we have

(2)

( ( Since, l is same for the part, hence

) )

It is cpi as it is dimension independent Material having lower cpi will be the preferred choice.

(B)

P
A cantilever beam of length l & load P with x-section b*h is shown.

Performance parameter (pp) = Constraint: h b

specified

(i) b is specified (ii) No constraint on h

Now we have,

const.

This is pp

COST CALCULATION :

{ since

It is cpi as it is related only to material properties.

WEIGHTED PROPERTY INDEX (wpi)

The cost-performance index method (cpi) of material selection is based on single performance parameter, but in actual situation the selected materials are supposed to satisfy more than one performance requirements. WPI method takes care of it.

BasisNot all design objectives are equal in importance. Hence, we can, based on merit of the situation, establish a weighting factor for each objective.

How to establish weighting factor wi?

There are two general schemes for working with weighting factors. 1. Set for each property such that , where i is summed over all properties under consideration. Note: This is the most common scheme. 2. is allowed to take ona range of values, with the largest value denoting the property of greatest importance.

Scaled Property :
Since different properties have widely different numerical values, each property is scaled with the largest values of the property of the screened materials. Three situations arise: 1. For properties which are most desirable to have high value, scaled property is defined as = x 100 Where is the scaled property of the material.

ILLUSTRATION: Let the property under consideration is yield strength. Let it is like Mat 1: y = 100 MPa Mat 2: y = 300 MPa Mat 3: y = 150 MPa Then , , , 1 = 100 *100 = 33.3 300 1 = 300 *100 = 100 300 1 = 150 *100 = 50 300

2. For property which is most desirable to have low value e.g. density, corrosion loss, cost, electrical residence etc, the scaled property is defined as 3. = x 100

Where

is the scaled property of the material.

4. For properties that are not readily expressed in numerical values, e.g. weldability, machinability, wear resistance etc. scaled property is determined on some kind of subjective rating. Illustration: Candidate materials Property Weldability Relative rating (on 10-scale) Scaled property ( ) A Excellent 10 100 B good 6 60 {6/10*100 =100} C good 6 60 D fair 2 20

Then,

where mpi is material performance index of material under consideration. is the weighting factor for ith property of
Material under consideration is the scaled property of the material.

This way, the mpi for all candidate materials is determined, the material with highest

value of mpi is considered for application.

Note: ways: If we wish to include cost as property then it is incorporated for consideration in two

1. As a property with its & w. Or 2. As a moderator with material performance index () In the first case, there is no problem. In the second case , moderated mpi value is calculated as,

s Where is density m is cost per unit mass