ME 215 Engineering Materials I

Chapter 2 Design Engineering and

Selection of Materials

Mechanical Engineering
University of Gaziantep

Dr. Ouzhan YILMAZ

Assistant Professor

Introduction
Design of new products and development of the existing ones is
the essential purpose of engineering.
For the designing of a machine element or a component, an
engineer has to consider many requirements.
The selection of the material from which a part is to be produced
has always been a predominant factor in the overall performance
of a design because of its influence on other factors.
Hence, it is not usually possible to make
the final decision on the geometry and
dimensions of a part until the material is
selected.

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

Making the right distinction between demands that are truly appropriate to
material properties and certain design features.
For example, strength of a part depends upon the
strength of material and geometrical parameters.
This does not mean that high strength materials
are needed to achieve the required strength of the
part.

Instead, designer can prefer a weaker material but

larger dimensions as long as there are no space
or weight restrictions. When such restrictions are
tight, then strength of material itself becomes
considerably important.

Do not understimate me!

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

In addition, material selection has such a
great influence;
-

the selection of a totally different material

would result in a new design approach.

Inevitably, chosing the most suitable

material for a part is possible by good
storehouse knowledge concerning the
material properties.

The most decisive factor for making a

proper selection is the experience, which
no book could provide.

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

A simple flow diagram of design thinking for material selection:
NEED

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

DESIGN LIMITATIONS

Order of Importance

Production Requirements

Level of Satisfaction

Economic Requirements

Failure Criteria

Maintenance Requirements

FINAL CHOICE

MATERIAL ALTERNATIVES

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Storehouse Knowledge

Material Selection

Experience

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

Every design effort is aimed at satisfying an existent or potential need.
From the analysis of the need, a designer
determines essential and desirable
features of the design that are expressed in
the form of functional requirements.
As it is impossible for a design to satisfy
all of the requirements to the same
degree, they are then arranged in the
order of importance in order to identify
the areas of comprimise.

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

Furthermore, a design has to be in
compliance with certain inevitable
design limitations that are grouped
as: Manufacturing (production), Money
(economic) and Maintenance
requirements (i.e. 3M rule).
Depending upon the nature of design, it is
sometimes the functional requirements
and sometimes the design limitations
that dictate the properties to be desired in
the metarial for the design work at hand.

Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

Functional requirements concern the
mechanical properties of material (such
as strength, stiffness, resilience,
toughness, dimensional stability,
hardness, etc.) and the physical
properties (e.g. coefficient of linear
expansion, thermal and electrical
conductivity, and so on).
Production requirements are logically
the first to be considered. Hence, the
designer must consider functional
merits of the material as well as its
ability to be machined, shaped, formed,
cast, welded, and so on.
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Fundamental Aspects of the Design Procedure

Economic requirements are based
on the final product cost composed
of raw material cost and production
costs with overheads. The cost of
any product should be as high as the
customers can pay for it.

Finally, maintenance requirements

(i.e. whether replacement or repair is
required) depend upon size of the
part, extent of possible damage,
facilities of the customers and the
acceptable level of costs.

Production Requirements
A design is realized only after it is produced. Hence, the designer must be
aware of the fact that production is carried out according to drawings and
specifications, where the production group may give useful hints.
Material selection depends upon the functional demands, how many parts
will be produced, which materials can be used, and what properties are
related for that design.
The production requirements can be gathered in the following groups:
1. Machinability
2. Formability
3. Castability
4. Suitability for Compacting
5. Weldability
6. Heat Treatability
7. Adaptability to Special Processes
8. Adaptability to Forms of Protection

Production Requirements Machinability

Machining is shaping a part by removing the unwanted material in the form
of chips to achieve the desired shape. Turning, milling, shaping, drilling and
boring are the familiar examples of chip removal processes. In addition;
grinding, honing and lapping remove the material with abrasives.
Speed of chip removal, tool life and quality of machined surfaces are used
jointly to describe the machinability. Quantitatively speaking, a highly
machinable material is the one that allows the maximum amount of chip
removal with the minimum tool wear, yielding a high surface quality.

The above factors vary not only from one material to another, but also from
one machining process to another.

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Production Requirements Formability

Forming processes (e.g. rolling, forging, cold heading, stamping, pressing,
and drawing) provide special advantage of enabling the desired shape to
be obtained with ease, without machining the surfaces that are not mating.
This is a great advantage over chip removal processes.

Another advantage of such processes is that, unlike casting process, most

engineering materials are amenable to forming. However, the main problem
is that they are costly processes.
During forming operations, the material is subjected to considerable degree
of deformation affecting its mechanical properties. This can be beneficial or
detrimental depending upon the material as well as type and extent of the
forming process.

11

Production Requirements Castability

Casting is used to produce finished parts as well as intermediate forms
requiring further operations. In theory, any material that can be melted can
also be cast.
Casting has a special advantage to produce parts with sophisticated shape
especially in large numbers, which usually cannot be possible by the other
processes (e.g. the carburetor of a car).

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Production Requirements Castability

The main difficulty is that the process is quite dependent on the design.
Shape of casting must enable the molten metal to fill all cavities in the
mould. Also, as a metal shrinks upon freezing, the molten metal must be
constantly fed during solidification into mould to compensate the shrinkage,
otherwise a spongy metal is obtained. Hence, the designer must decide the
material and the type of casting process together.

13

Production Requirements Suitability for Compacting

This is required when the part will be produced by powder metallurgy.
The metal powder is compacted in a die to the desired form, and then
sintered to fuse the powder particles together.
Most metals and alloys can be used in this process, but only few of them
are economically justified. This process is the best way to produce parts
from brittle and very hard metals.

Although intricate forms with desirable mechanical properties could be

produced, the availability of required metal in the powder form and capital
investment are the main limitations.

14

Production Requirements Weldability

Welding process is not only used to
produce large and complex parts by
welding the simpler parts together (like
frames of certain machine tools), but
also used for maintenance and repairs.

Weldability does not mean the ability

to be welded, but represents the
relative ability of metals (usually
steels) to be welded without cracking
or error-free welding.

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Production Requirements Weldability

Production of especially large parts by
welding is regarded as an alternative to
casting when they are needed in few
numbers. However, the successful production
of complicated shapes by welding demands a
special design approach (like in case of
casting) as well as a careful planning of
stress-relief treatments and operations.
Two recent welding techniques (electron and
laser beam welding utilizing beams to
generate heat of fusion) have made it possible
to weld hardenable and heat treated steels,
which were not be welded before.

16

Production Requirements Heat Treatability

Heat treatment (causing structural changes in metal) is used to improve essential
mechanical properties, change grain size and relieve residual stresses.
Hardenability (depth of hardening) is a desirable material property if the aim
of heat treatment is to increase strength and/or hardness. It is dependent upon
materials rate of hardening.
Some ferrous and nonferrous alloys can be hardened by age (precipitation)
hardening. The alloy is heated to a temp. where it exists as a homogeneous
solid-solution phase, then it is cooled rapidly (quenched). Finally, it is held at
room temp. (natural aging) or above the room temp. (artificial aging) to allow
precipitation of solid- solution.

17

Production Requirements Heat Treatability

Heat treatment is also used to alter surface properties of ferrous alloys. Rapid
heating of surface by induction/flame followed by quenching (induction/flame
hardening) produces a hardened surface while the interior of material is softer.

In other thermal surface treatments (calorizing, carburizing, cyaniding, nitriding,

carbonitriding, chromizing, etc.), a substance diffuses into heated metal surface.

18

Production Requirements Adaptability to Special Processes

Many intricate and special parts are produced by chipless manufacturing
processes. In chemical milling, material is removed by the etching reaction
of chemical solutions with metal. It can also be used on plastics and glass.
Electrochemical machining (ECM) employs electroplating process, where
the tool (with inverse shape of part) is cathode and the workpiece is anode.
Electrodischarge machining (EDM) cuts metal by action of high-energy
electric sparks or electrical discharges.
Laser beam cutting is a recently developed cutting process using laser.

These processes are not fast methods of production. High capital cost and
slow production speed make them suitable only when parts to be produced
are of special nature and are few in numbers.

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Production Requirements Adaptability to Forms of Protection

In many cases, material properties could not meet some functional demands,
especially arising from environmental conditions. As high quality materials for this
purpose are too expensive, designer may use finishes and coatings.
Such finishes and coatings are employed in order to:
protect the base material against hostile environmental conditions
give functional properties that are not attainable within base material
improve the appearance of product by colour, polish or decoration

The finishes or coatings may be classified under four (4) main groups:
1. Organic coatings: resins, pigments, lacquers, varnishes, paints, dispersion
coatings, emulsion coatings, hot-melt coatings, plastic powder coatings
2. Metallic coatings: electroplates, chemical-deposition and sprayed-metal
coatings, hot-dip coatings, diffusion coatings, vapour-deposited coatings
3. Conversion coatings: phosphate, chromate, and chemical oxide coatings
4. Ceramic coatings: vitreous (glass-like), porcelain, and ceramic coatings
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Plastic Powder Coating

Metallic Coating

Ceramic Coating
Chromate coating

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Economic Requirements
Design requirements concerning the cost are simple: keep them as low as
possible without impairing the essential design features.
Cost of a design comprises production costs (built up from material and
processing), labour costs and capital costs.

The foremost economic factor is

availability.
- Candidate materials in a design
project must be available in market.
Expensive delays will be incurred
due to supply difficulties.

- A market research is a must

before final material selection.

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Economic Requirements
Actual cost of raw material is cost of material used in part plus cost of scrap
material. Adjustment of dimensions (whenever possible) to available stock
sizes is a regular design procedure to reduce scrap and production time.
Production costs depend on;
-

number of operations,

amount of skilled labour,

time in each operation.

In most cases, surface finish is

important for parts performance and
apperance.
- Thus, secondary finishing
operations may also be needed in
such cases.
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Maintenance Requirements
Maintenance covers activities that are necessary but not directly concerned
with operation or use (such as cleaning, lubrication, adjustment, overhaul
and repair of damaged/worn equipment).

In principle, durability (long life) is considered in

design as a user requirement. It is annoying that
a recently purchased product does not work any
longer, which causes inconvenience for customer,
heavy repair bills, or scapping of the product. So,
the complaints about service life and cost must
be minimized.
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Maintenance Requirements
How often and at what cost are
inevitable questions to be
answered during the design stage;
requiring a firm decision on whether
replacement or repair, or both will
be predicted. When frequent
replacements are predicted, part
must be cheap so that it is more
worthwhile than repair. If repair is
predicted, the material must lend
itself to acceptable forms of repair.
Non-stick frying pans and self cleaning ovens are recent examples indicating
that how use of a new material facilitates maintenance.
Plastic surfaces not only improve apperance, but also facilitate the
cleaning problems.
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Failure
Failure happens when a design is no longer able to satisfy any of functional
requirements. Failures not only cause costly damage, but may lead to loss
of many lives as in airplane crashes.
A conceptual understanding of failure is necessary to utilize the material
properties safely and economically.
In most design problems, primary concern
should be reducing the possibility of a
premature failure in service.

The service life can be in seconds (in case

of space applications) or many years (in
case of bridges).

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Failure
Possible failure types during service are excessive
deformation, fracture, inordinate wear and
deterioration.
- In practice, it is impossible to predict failure mode of
a part under severe service conditions.
- Some failures happen soon after the element is in
service, which are covered by a factor of safety.
Time dependent failures are difficult or even
impossible to avoid by applying factor of
safety.
- In such cases, parts are withdrawn from
service and tested for reliability. Such
specific data are not found in general
reference books.
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Failure - Excessive Deformation

Gross scale yielding and buckling are types of this failure. However, small
elastic deformation of an element in a precision machine may cause problem
while plastic deformation of an element in a building may be feasible.
Excessive deformation may also be responsible for the critical vibration of a
part under dynamic load, which does not only disturbs the function but also
leads to the complete destruction of part.
In addition, failures by excessive deformation can be immediate or timedependent (also called creep which is significant in high-temp. applications).

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Failure - Excessive Deformation

In many cases, the failure
criterion is based on
materials strength
although a failure by
excessive deformation is
implied. This is due to the
fact that the stress
approach is more
universal covering the
fracture aspect as well.
It must be remembered that when a failure by inordinate elastic deformation
is of issue, design approach must always be based on deformation analysis
since the results shall be compatible with functional requirements.
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Failure - Fracture
When analysing the fracture failure modes, the preceding deformation is of
importance. If failure occurs following a large deformation, such fractures are
called ductile fracture (which is not common in engineering applications). In
contrast, a fracture with no or very little prior deformation is brittle fracture.
Many materials fail by fracture in three ways: sudden brittle fracture,
fatigue (progressive) fracture and time dependent (creep) fracture.

30

Failure - Fracture
Brittle fracture is not only
experienced by brittle materials.
Higher rate or sudden
application of load and
presence of a complex stress
may cause ductile to brittle
transition (embrittlement) of a
material.
Fatigue failure (the most common failure in applications) is a highly localized
microscopic phenomenon. It occurs in parts that are subjected to repeated
stresses even if they are below the yield point of material.

Creep failure (stress rupture) occurs when a material is loaded at higher

temperatures for a long time. In polymeric materials, it can occur even at
normal temperatures and under relatively low stresses.

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Failure - Wear
Wear is result of the action of abrasive or other forces on the surface of a
machine part. It is manifested by a loss of surface material (either in regular
or irregular form) which causes change in the part dimensions.

Wear is a complex subject due to many variables involved in the process

where lubrication, condition of surface and type of material with which part
is in contact are the most effective factors.
There is no a quantitative test or criterion of wear. Thus, design evaluations
are based on past experience more than anything else.

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Failure - Deterioration
Deterioration (loss of original properties) may occur in certain applications.
Most common examples are caused by the environment in which materials
operate. Reaction of a chemical environment (corrosion and oxidation) are
the most common examples.
No material is completely resistant to liquid or gas. Liquid or gas absorption
may cause embrittlement which is a special problem in nuclear applications
because of danger of nuclear substances.
Speaking of nuclear applications, material properties are significantly altered
by irradiation. In some cases, the effects of irradiation can be beneficial as
it causes increase in yield strength.
Fungus or other growths cause deterioration of strength or other material
properties (noticable in wood and some plastics), or loss of efficiency of the
whole system (some sea bacteria on a ship body).
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Proper Failure Analysis

Proper application of failure analysis provides a valuable checklist to design
problems and material limitations.
A good design is the one that just answers the need where the requirements
are slightly exceeded by the capabilities of the design. Under-designing
tends to fail in some way whereas over-designing is not only economically
pointless but also unapplicable or useless.
Fundamental factors related to failure or shortening of service life are listed
below (the failure may be due to any or combination of them):
1. Problematic design
2. Improper selection of material
3. Heat treatment methods

4. Fabrication techniques
5. Improper machining and assembly methods
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Material Selection Process

-

reduce the number of candidate materials to a manageable number.

Past experiences, investigation of materials currently used for similar

designs, existing standards, codes or legal requirements (if any) help to
narrow the selection list.
Design philosophy plays important role in screening material alternatives.
It determines general trend of design varying in different industries, countries
and companies.

It is difficult to define design philosophy. For instance, the design philosophy

applied for the products in car industry may be similar. However, aircraft or
space industry needs specific design philosophy requiring certain criteria:
strength must be combined with lightness
accuracy and design efficiency are more important than cost
life in operating hours is relatively limited
frequent and careful maintenance must be ensured
wide extremes of service conditions must be taken into account
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Material Selection Process

Measures of value (highly dependent on design philosophy) are standards
by which the merits of a material can be weighed. Its proper establishment
provides a clever and economical material selection.
In an engineering design, benefits are often based on intangible factors.
The most universal method for measures of value is in monetary terms
such as comparison of the product price with its rivals.
However, the designer must know that incorrect comparison leads to biased
results and misleading benefit analysis.

For instance, it is not correct to look at only the cost per unit weight of raw
material without considering how much material is actually required to
produce a certain part. The example in the next page illustrates this problem.

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Material Selection An Example

A cylindrical part of 500 mm long will carry an axial load of 600 kg.
Material A with raw material cost of 100 TL/kg can be stressed up to
15 kg/mm2, while Material B with raw material cost of 150 TL/kg can
be stressed upto 25 kg/mm2. Both materials have the same density of
7.8 10-6 kg/mm3. Which material must be preferred based on cost?
The cross-sectional area of the parts using materials A and B:

Part A: 600/15 = 40 mm2 & Part B: 600/25 = 24 mm2

Corresponding material costs:
Part A: (40 500 7.8 10-6) 100 = 15.60 TL
Part B: (24 500 7.8 10-6) 150 = 14.04 TL
Although material B is more expensive per unit weight, the part will be
cheaper if it is produced from this material.
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Performance Rating Method

The designer asks simple questions: What should be the desirable
properties of the candidate materials and how important is each
and every of these desirable features? A more difficult exercise is
to determine the relative order and degree of importance.
The process starts with drawing a matrix of comparisons in order to
compare the desirable properties in pairs. For this purpose, desirable
material properties must be listed and given a code number.
Suppose that there are five desirable
properties: (1) raw material cost, (2) wear
resistance, (3) castability, (4) machinability,
(5) heat conductivity. A square matrix is
then drawn up with the attributes (note that
the listing is not in the order of importance).

1
2
3
4
5
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Performance Rating Method

All pairs of attributes in the matrix are
compared for relative importance in the
form of column-row such as 1-2, 1-3, 1-4,
1-5, 2-1, 2-3, and so on.

Marks below are put in the matrix:

XX : 1 is more important than 2.
X : no decision is made in favour of 1 or 3.
: 2 is less important than 1.

2
-

3 4
1
X X
2 XX
XX 3 X X
4 X XX X
5 XX XX X X
6X 4X 5X 3X

5
X
X
2X

After all comparisons are made, the number of marks in each column
are added. This way, the order of importance of properties can be
obtained. From the table, property 1 has the first ranking with 6X.
In order to weigh the merits, the designer must also devise a value
scale for each property (i.e. measures of value must be established).
39

Performance Rating Method

Raw material cost is only 6/5 times more important than castability, but
it may not be the exact mathematical equivalent of actual importance.
Therefore, level of desirability must also be defined by assigning
certain numerical values that provide a scale for comparison.
The following scale may be devised: (5) most desirable, (4) highly
desirable, (3) desirable, (2) slightly desirable, (1) least desirable.
However, a set consisting of the numbers 10, 8, 5, 3 and 1 is usually
employed as below due to its close approximation to a linear scale:
Order of Importance
1 (6X)
2 (5X)
3 (4X)
4 (3X)
5 (2X)

Merit Ranking
Raw material cost
Castability
Wear resistance
Machinability
Heat conductivity

Measure of Value
10
8
8
5
3
40

Performance Rating Method

Standing of a certain material among candidate materials is determined
according to its performance rating (R). In order to calculate this,
the designer has to devise a grading system for performance factor.
The performance factor scale is also optional. It can be from poorest to
best (e.g. 0 to 5, 0 to 10, or even 0 to 1).
Performance rating (Rm) of a candidate
material is calculated by the measure of
value (Ci ) and performance factor (Gim):

Rm Ci Gim
i 1

C
i 1

When the performance rating for all candidate materials is determined,

the designer can specify the highest ranking material for the design.
Obviously, a systematic and objective selection is provided by above
method on the condition that the values of C and G are established in
an unbiased manner.
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Performance Rating Method

Level of
Importance

Measure
of Value
(Ci)

Raw Material Cost

Castability

Performance Factor (Gi)

Ranking (CiGi)

10

40

50

32

32

Wear

16

24

Machinability

15

15

Heat Treatibility

12

= 115

= 130

= 34

Finally, the material having the highest ranking is chosen:

RA = 115 / 34 = 3,38
RB = 130 / 34 = 3,82 ()
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Checklist for a Systematic Material Selection

1. Check existing standards, codes or legal requirements.

2. Make a functional analysis and determine the functional requirements.

3. Make a failure analysis and determine in how many ways the designed
machine part can fail to fulfil these functions.
4. Determine the essential parameters.
5. Establish the measures of value and the performance factors.
6. Analyse similar designs and determine the list of materials that can be
used, paying attention to the design philosophy.
7. Screen all candidate materials and discard those which do not possess
the essential properties. A backward method of selection would be to
look for materials which possess the essential properties.

8. Assign a performance factor to each pertinent properties of candidate

materials to see how closely it meets the desirable material properties.
9. Perform the equation of perfomance rating (Rm) for each material.

10. The material with the highest performance rating is the optimum material.
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