Selection of Materials and Processes

Goal and objectives:

The main objectives are to illustrate how to:
1. Analyze material performance requirements
for a given application.
2. Create alternative solutions, screen and
then rank them.
3.Use quantitative methods in materials
selection.
4. Incorporate computer methods in the
selection process.
5. Find reliable sources of material properties.
• General Requirements for Early Materials and
Process Selection
In order to be of real design value, the
information on which the initial selection of
material/process combinations and their ranking
is to be based should be available at the early
concept design stage of a new product. Such
information might include, for example:
• Product life volume
• Permissible tooling expenditure levels
• Possible part shape categories and complexity
levels
• Service or environment requirements
• Appearance factors
• Accuracy factors
• Selection of Manufacturing Processes
• The selection of appropriate processes for the
manufacture of a particular part is based on a matching
of the required attributes of the part and the various
process capabilities.
• Once the overall function of a part is determined, a list
can be formulated giving the essential geometrical
features, material properties, and other attributes that
are required.
• This represents a “shopping list” that must be filled by
the material properties and process capabilities.
• The attributes on the “shopping list” are related to the
final function of the part and are determined by
geometric and service conditions.
 There are hundreds of processes and
thousands of individual materials. Moreover,
new processes and materials are being
developed continually. Fortunately, the
following observations help to simplify the
overall selection problem:
1. Many combinations of processes and
materials are not possible. Figure 2.3 shows a
compatibility matrix for a selected range of
processes and material types.
• 2. Many combinations of processes are not possible and,
therefore, do not appear in any processing sequences.
• 3. Some processes affect only one attribute of the part,
particularly surface treatment and heat-treatment
processes.
• 4. Sequences of processes have a natural order of shape
generation, followed by feature addition or refinement by
material removal and then material property or surface
enhancement.
Processes can be categorized as:
• Primary processes
• Primary/secondary processes
• Tertiary processes
• Primary process refers to the main shape
generating process, assuming that the material
has been purchased in the appropriate stock
form (wire, tube, sheet, etc.). Such processes
should be selected to produce as many of the
required attributes of the part as possible and
usually appear first in a sequence of
operations.
• Casting, forging, and injection molding are
examples of primary shape generating
processes.
• Primary/secondary processes, on the other
hand, can generate the main shape of the
part, form features on the part, or refine
features on the part. These processes appear
at the start or later in a sequence of
processes.
• This category includes material removal
processes such as machining, grinding, and
broaching.
• Tertiary processes do not affect the geometry of
the part and always appear after primary and
primary/secondary processes. This category
consists of finishing processes such as surface
treatments and heat treatments.
• Process Capabilities
• Each process can be analyzed to determine
the range of its capabilities in terms of
attributes of the parts that can be produced.
Included in these capabilities are shape
features that can be produced, natural
tolerance ranges, surface roughness
capabilities, and so on. These capabilities
determine whether a process can be used to
produce the corresponding part attributes.
d Used on a limited basis: 1, cast iron; 2, carbon steel; 3, alloy steel; 4, stainless steel; 5,
aluminum and alloys; 6, copper and alloys; 7, zinc and alloys;8, magnesium and alloys; 9,
titanium; 10, thermoplastics;11, thermosets; 12, nickel and alloys.
• General Shape Attributes
Depressions (Depress): The ability to form recesses or
grooves in the surfaces of the part. The first column
entry refers to the possibility of forming depressions in
a single direction, while the second entry refers to the
possibility of forming depressions in more than one
direction. These two entries refer to depressions in the
direction of tooling motion and those in other
directions.
• Uniform wall (UniWall): Uniform wall thickness. Any
nonuniformity arising from the natural tendency of the
process, such as material stretching or buildup behind
projections in centrifugal processes is ignored, and the
wall is still considered uniform.
• Uniform cross-section (UniSect): Parts where any cross-
sections normal to a part axis are identical, excluding draft
(slight taper) in the axial direction for die or mold release if
required.
• Axis of rotation (AxisRot): Parts whose shapes can be
generated by rotation about a single axis: a solid of revolution.
• Regular cross-section (RegXSec): Cross-sections normal to the
part’s axis contain a regular pattern (e.g., a hexagonal or
splined shaft). Changes in shape that maintain a regular
pattern are permissible (e.g., a splined shaft with a hexagonal
head).
• Captured cavities (CaptCav): The ability to form cavities with
pointed surfaces (e.g., a bottle).
• Enclosed (Enclosed): Parts that are hollow and completely
enclosed.
• Draft-free surfaces (NoDraft): The capability of
producing constant cross-sections in the direction of
tooling motion. Many processes can approach this
capability when less than ideal draft allowances are
specified, but this designation is reserved for
processes where this capability is a basic
characteristic and no draft can be obtained without
cost penalty.
• Part consolidation (PConsol): The ability to
incorporate several functional requirements into
a single piece, eliminating the need for multipart
assemblies.
• Alignment features (Alignmt): The ease of
incorporating in the part positive alignment or
location features that aid in the assembly of
mating parts.
• Integral fasteners (IntFast): The cost-effectiveness
and scope of fastening elements that can be
designed into the part. The ability to incorporate
features such as threads, which generally involve
separate fasteners, is not given as much
consideration as elements such as snap features.
Selection of Materials
• The systematic selection of specific materials to meet
required properties is given considerable attention.
• All these procedures are valuable for the systematic
selection of materials in product design.
1.Grouping of Materials into Process Compatible
Classes:
• Rather than using a single comprehensive materials
database, it is preferable to divide the material
databases into classes related to the principal shape-
generating processes used in discrete parts
manufacture.
• This is necessary because of the incompatibility between
some processes and materials and because, generally, the
selection of processes and materials must be considered
together.
• Thus, the separate material databases should include, for
example, standard metal stock forms (wire, rod, etc.),
sand and permanent mold-casting alloys, die-casting
alloys, metal powders, thermoplastic granules,
thermoplastic sheets and extruded stock forms, and so
on.
Material Selection by Membership Function
Modification
• One challenge of designing a system so that
appropriate materials are chosen at the early stages of
design lies in modelling ambiguous or vague material
constraints. For instance, a designer may want to use
a material with a yield stress of “about” 2000 psi and
a service temperature “in the neighborhood of” 90°C.
A conventional database search for materials with
properties greater than those specified would
unnecessarily exclude materials with properties close
to the desired values, but not in the range specified.
• However, an alternative approach is to model such
vague qualifiers as “about” and “in the neighborhood
of” using aspects of fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic relies on the
concept of a membership function to determine how
well an object fits into a defined set.
• Ambiguity in the material constraints specified by the
designer is modeled by providing the designer with
different levels of accuracy to further describe the
material constraints specified.
• These levels could correspond, for example, to the
qualifiers “approximately,” “close to,” and “more or
less.” These levels of precision are illustrated in Figure
2.4.
• A simple example may help to illustrate the advantages and
flexibility of this approach (Figure 2.5). For instance, if
pressing and sintering has been selected as a candidate
primary process and the user has restricted the material to
one with an ultimate tensile strength between 25 and 30 kpsi,
then a conventional search of a small database that contains
102 entries would yield 15 candidate materials. A fuzzy search
with the qualifier “close to” would yield 29 candidate
materials with ultimate tensile strengths between 21 and 29
kpsi. The qualifier “approximately” produces 38 materials
with ultimate tensile strengths from 19 to 36 kpsi. In all, 17
additional materials with tensile strengths between 16 and 39
kpsi
 Material Selection by Dimensionless Ranking
• An aspect of material selection, which is a great
source of difficulty, is the distinction between the
fundamental material properties, which are given
in material databases, and the actual design
requirements, which are usually based on a
combination of different property values. For the
present purposes, material cost per unit weight is
included as a property of the material, so that
economic constraints on design can be
considered in just the same manner as weight
constraints, strength constraints, and so on.
• Examples:
• Thus, for a structural member in an aerospace
product, the designers may be interested in the
maximum stiffness per unit weight, while for a
high-volume consumer product, the maximum
stiffness per unit material cost may be more
important. In the first case, the materials would
be compared on the basis of a function of
Young’s modulus and density, and in the second
case a combination of Young’s modulus,
density, and cost per unit weight would be used
for comparison purposes.
• Such material comparisons may typically be required
on the basis of total performance, best performance
per unit weight, or best performance per unit cost. A
procedure is established later in this section for
making these comparisons on a dimensionless scale
from 0 to 100.
• Table 2.3 gives N values for Young’s modulus for a
small range of commonly used materials. It can be
seen that the values appear to represent an
engineer’s perception of material stiffness. In
particular, values greater than 50 apply to materials
that are found in structural applications.
• Largest and least values for a range of principal
fundamental material properties are given in
Table 2.4. A small material database is given in
Table 2.5 that includes representative
materials from metal alloys, polymers, rubbers,
foams, ceramics, and natural materials.
• Primary Process/Material Selection
• Systematic procedures can be developed for the
selection of primary process/material
combinations. Such procedures operate by
eliminating processes and materials as a more
detailed specification of the required part’s
attributes occurs. The elements of such a
selection procedure can be illustrated by
considering, as an example, the part shown in
Figure.
• To carry out the primary processing. If these
processes were deemed not to be acceptable
choices, then the alternatives would be to make
changes to some of the shape attributes, or allocate
one or more of the attributes to secondary
processes.

• If, for example, we allow slight tapered upper and

lower surfaces in the 20 mm wide depression of the
oven bracket, we would enable both sand casting
and investment casting as potential processes.
Systematic Selection of Processes and Materials
• The development of computer-based procedures for
process/material selection from general part
attributes could have a significant impact on early
product design decision-making.

• Several approaches to this problem were made in the

past, but this remains an important area of design
still not fully supported by computer-aided
engineering.
Computer-Based Primary Process/Material Selection
• In this computer-aided material and process selector
(CAMPS), inputs were made under the headings of part
shape, size, and production parameters to search a
comprehensive process database and identify
processing possibilities.
• In addition, required performance parameters were
specified by making selections under the general
categories of mechanical properties, thermal
properties, electrical properties, and physical
properties. As many selections as required could be
made, and at each stage the candidate processes were
presented to the system user.
• This early approach to process and material selection has been
incorporated into a robust cost-estimating software tool for
use at the early stages of product design. This program
contains definable process limits, such as maximum
dimensions, minimum wall thickness, and so on. The selection
procedure indicates that any combinations of process and
material that are not suitable or for which the part geometry
may be outside normal processing limits.
• Figure 2.13 shows an initial part description where the general
part type and overall dimensions, including wall thickness, are
defined. Following this, a process must be selected as
indicated in Figure 2.14, and then the compatible materials are
indicated (red for incompatible, green for compatible, and
yellow for compatible but exceeding a normal processing
limit).
• Expert Processing Sequence Selector
While the type of approach described above may
generally result in the selection of appropriate combinations
of materials and primary processes, in some cases matching
of the material and primary process alone to the finished part
attributes, without considering viable sequences of
operations, may lead to the omission of some appropriate
combinations of primary processer
• Expert processing sequence generator was enhanced this
aspect
• The procedure was divided into four steps: geometry
input, process selection, material selection, and system
update of material and process selections and materials.
• The geometrical classification of a part is concerned
with the following characteristics:
1. The overall size
2. The basic shape
3. The accuracy and surface finish
4. The cross-section
5. Functional features—projections, depressions,
and so on
• Figure 2.16 shows this process graphically.
Here circles represent he goals and processes.
Satisfied goals are indicated by filled-in circles
with arrows pointing to the material or
process that satisfied the goal.
• Economic Ranking of Processes
• Viable material/process combinations
determined by selection procedures as
described above require evaluation as to
which is the most suitable; usually by
estimating which is the most economic.
• This requires the availability of procedures for
realistically evaluating manufacturing costs
early in the design process.
• Statistical data are also available on the sizes
of the machine tools relative to the sizes of
the workpieces machined.
• Combining this data with information
gathered on machine costs and power
availability, it can be shown that estimates of
machined component costs
• The Statistical information required can be
divided into three areas:
1. Workpiece and production data
2. Factors affecting nonproductive costs
3. Factors affecting machining time and costs
The common workpieces can be classified into
seven basic categories, as illustrated in Figure
• The material, the form of the material
(standard stock or near-net shape),
dimensions of the workpiece, cost per unit
weight, average machine and operator rate,
and batch size per setup.
• A knowledge of the workpiece and production
data not only allows the cost of the workpiece
to be estimated, but also estimates of non
productive costs and machining costs.