Lecture 34: Designing

Hybrid Materials

Jayant Jain

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

So far we have looked into the materials

available to us: Materials selection including
shape and process, complex problems, simple
problems
As an engineer, think of creating materials:
Improving material can help you only a bit but
Creating material can help you a lot
Gives more options, there is no limit to that
This is where the idea of hybrid materials comes

Extending Materials Property Space

Zero expansion
material

Significant areas in property map is empty: holes in materials

property space

What are hybrid materials??

Hybrid materials combine the properties of two (or more)
monolithic materials, or of one material and space. They
include fibrous and particulate composites, foams and
lattices, sandwiches, and almost all natural materials.

Hybrid Materials: Man made

materials

What are going to be key ingredients of the

hybrid design??

After combining materials think of hybrid as a

material in its ownthink about their effective
properties and then plotting them on the
chart

Special requirements
on this front then
think of creating
these materials

Function will help

in deciding the
configuration

Our task would be is to make hybrid

materials also eligible for selection
In other words we should be able to
estimate their effective properties
and plot them on the chart

What might we hope to achieve??

Where would you end up
depends on:
Ingredients of hybrid design
A: Zinc coated steel,
B: fiber reinforced composites: rule of mixture
C: gains are less spectacular, particulate
composites
D: Fire sprinkler: metal-wax system

Hybrid Design

Identify and
separate the
conflicting
requirements

If the design requirements are

exceptionally demanding, no single
material may be found that can meet
them all:

Example
Materials for long-span power cables
The objectives are to minimize the electrical resistance,
but at the same time to maximize the strength since this
allows the greatest span

All materials lie

above broken
Trade-off line