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Materials Selection & Tools to Enhance Product Design
Use the right materials to improve performance, reduce risk and cost while increasing customer satisfaction. Ansys Granta Selector provides powerful tools and extensive materials selection databases for intelligent decision making. Trusted by engineers and materials experts, you can rapidly find the best materials for any application then directly export materials property data.
Learn how access to a material selection database can be used to quickly identify the right materials for your products for the appropriate analyses. Then, take the appropriate materials of your product and use it in your product model for structural simulation analyses.
Choosing Engineering Materials for Technical Designs
The materials selection procedure is more closely related to the activities of technical (or engineering) design. Because of this, the methods used for material selection are by far the most sophisticated in this design field. For matching material attributes with technical design requirements, there are numerous systematic methods, many of which are numerically based and some of which are implemented as computer software tools.
Additionally, there is very simple access to a wealth of accurate and verifiable technical data (materials and design) available from a variety of sources (organizations and publications). These resources are very helpful for beginning product designers who are choosing materials.
Material Assessment and Procedural Choice
Whatever method of material selection is used, the choice of an appropriate material or materials will be the end outcome. Since not all materials are suited for all production processes, the material itself will restrict the methods that can be employed.
Cast iron, for instance, cannot be resistance welded when considering joining processes. But there are a few elements that apply to both the material and process selection choices:
- Quantity of parts that must be produced
- Product/Element Size
- Product/Element Weight
- Level of Precision Necessary
- Needed Surface Polish and Appearance
At the material evaluation step, each of these criteria must be taken into account.
However, the emphasis will be firmly on “manufacturability” or “processability,” as it is often known, in terms of the material evaluation for process planning. This is frequently referred to as “workability” and is defined as a material’s capacity to be worked or moulded into the finished component. In order to explain how easily a material may be utilized for particular procedures, phrases like “weldability,” “castability,” “formability,” and “machinability” are used. The workability will also have a big impact on the part’s quality, which is determined by three things:
- Absence of faults
- Surface quality
- Tolerances and Precision in Dimensions
The part’s quality will be significantly influenced by the mix of the material and the technique. In effect, the combination of the material and the method will have a major impact on the part’s quality.
Economic Considerations of Engineering Materials Selection
In addition to the technical issues mentioned above, there are also economic factors to take into account. The costs associated with a product’s design and production will have a big impact on a lot of the decisions that need to be taken. As a result, it is imperative to think about the product’s entire cost as soon as possible. The quantity needed in terms of production volume, production rate, and economic batch size will determine other economic factors. In the end, some of the elements that affect both material and process selection should be further taken into account for this aspect of the process planning activity.
