Lecture 29:

Selection of Material
and Shape

Jayant Jain

Assistant Professor,
Department of Applied Mechanics,
IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, 110016

Microscopic Shape factors

A solid square section is expanded, at constant mass, to a
larger square section

Here microscopic shape factor is the reciprocal of relative

density
The stiffness of the beam, expressed in terms of that
of the solid of which it is made, is

The same is true for strength.

Think about linking Materials property charts

and Shape efficiency charts
Materials property chart: Displays properties of
Materials
Shape efficiency chart: Displays influence of
Shape on properties
Think about utilising these two to select the best
Material-Shape combination

This schematic
is four-quadrant
chart

Material property chart

constraint chart

Performance chart
Shape efficiency chart

Steps involved in 4-Q chart

Comparison among
different materials

It is a graphical method to predict what would be your

performance metric for a given material-shape combination:
It is only good when you have to do selection in limited options

Problem

Linked Material, Shape, Constraint and

Performance in a graphical way
There are other ways to do this in a more
thorough way:
The way is you need to stitch shape factors in
Material indices

We need Material Indices that characterizes

Best Material-shape combination

Material Indices that Include Shape

Elastic bending of beams: Consider the selection of a
material for a beam of specified bending stiffness SB and
length L (the constraints), to have minimum mass, m (the
objective).

The term in square brackets

depends on material
and shape

Elastic twisting of shafts

Elastic twisting of shafts: A shaft of section A and
length L is subjected to a torque T. It twists through an
angle . It is required that the torsional stiffness, T/,
meet a specified target, ST, at minimum mass