Transdisciplinary Engineering Design Process

6Design Analyses for Material Selection

Engineering has never been easy. The speed of introduction of new materials, tools, and techniques is increasing. We are approaching a human processing bottleneck for effective use of these inventions in better engineering of cost-effective, timely, useful and reliable artifacts.

6.1 Introduction

Materials engineering is a field of engineering that includes a range of kinds of material and how to use them in manufacturing. To convert the basic materials into an engineering product, materials with specific properties should be selected. Material selection is a process that is performed to select the best materials for the specific application and product development. If an appropriate material selection is not performed, the product life tends to be highly unpredictable.

The competitive market mechanism and increase in product consumption makes product designers think more about materials than before. Among the many factors to consider in product design, selecting proper materials and embracing the challenges to explore and develop a variety of manufacturing processes associated with design are two of the most important responsibilities of a design engineer. A primary design requirement in the selection of the proper materials for a specific application is that the material be capable of meeting the design service life requirement at the least cost. For a defined service life, first, the designer assess the suitability of a range ...