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ME480/580: Materials Selection Lecture Notes for Week Three Winter 2011

MULTIPLE CONSTRAINTS IN MATERIALS SELECTION: OVERCONSTRAINED DESIGN I


Reading: Ashby Chapter 7 and 8.

Most design problems are more complex than those examples we've discussed so far. Let's look at a more complex design: EXAMPLE DESIGN ASSIGNMENT:

Cantilever beam of square cross section and fixed length L. Support an end load, F, without failing. End deflection must be less than . Minimum mass.

MODEL:

MOP: minimum mass:

PARAMETERS: L: F: t: : :
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Okaylets tackle them as if they were each a separate constraint, using the optimization recipe. FIRST CONSTRAINT: No failure under the end load, F.

SUBSTITUTE INTO THE MOP:

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER CONSTRAINT (ON DEFLECTION)?

SUBSTITUTE INTO MOP:

Uh-oh... we've got two constraints, and now we have two materials performance indices (M) and they're DIFFERENT! What do we do? This type of design is called an OVERCONSTRAINED design-- That is, we have more constraints than free parameters. Most materials selection problems are OVERCONSTRAINED. There are several ways we can deal with multiple constraints in the selection process, by using DECISION MATRICES, MULTIPLE SELECTION STAGES, COUPLING EQUATIONS, and PENALTY FUNCTIONS.

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I. DECISION MATRICES
Commonly used and presented in other design classes. One version comes from Crane and Charles (see syllabus for reference). In simplest form, a matrix is developed with the DESIGN REQUIREMENTS along the columns and the CANDIDATE MATERIALS along the rows: I.A.

Materials are rated in a GO-NO GO fashion as either acceptable (a), under-value (U), overvalue (O), or excessive (E). PROBLEMS: 1. 2. 3. Next best (but still not very good) approach is to inject some quantitative measure by replacing U, a, O, E with numbers 1-5 (increasing is better).

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I.B.

This provides a quantifiable selection criterion, but PROBLEMS: 1. 2. To eliminate concern #2, we could add WEIGHTING FACTORS, I.C.

but this just adds another level of subjectivity. How can you back-up the assertion that the rigidity is 2.5 times more important than cracking resistance? One significant improvement we can add here is to use PERFORMANCE INDICES rather than materials properties. This essentially takes us beyond primary constraints into the realm of optimization. For each constraint or design goal, we develop an M value to use as one of the columns:

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I.D.

Crane and Charles convert these to dimensionless numbers (relative values) by dividing by the largest property value, and then sum these to determine the overall rating of the material. This is better (we're selecting based on performance indices) but now we're back to treating all of these with the same importance. The last act of Crane and Charles is to apply weighting factors to the performance indices: I.E.

This is pretty good except that it is STILL SUBJECTIVE because there is no justification for the weighting factors that are used. The difficulty with most of the decision matrix approaches is simply this subjectivity. There are some schemes for improving that, and Dr. Ullman's group at OSU has been studying the design methodology and has developed an approach that has resulted in a computer program called the Engineering Decision Support System (EDSS).

http://www.cs.orst.edu/~dambrosi/edss/info.html

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II. MULTIPLE SELECTION STAGES


A second approach to the multiple constraints problem is the use of selection stages. Each of the constraints is used to develop a performance index as we did in the earlier example: M1, M2, M3, ..., Mn. These are rank ordered in order of importance (uh-oh...) from most important to least. We use the first performance index on the appropriate selection chart, and select a large enough (uh-oh...) group of materials to leave something for the other constraints to work with. Repeat with the other performance indices. (Why the "uh-oh"s? How do we decide on the rank ordering? Subjective decision. How do we decide on the number of materials to leave in the pool at each stage? Subjective decision again.) II.A. EXAMPLE: Multiple Stage Selection for a Precision Measurement System (micrometer). There are several design goals we want to meet with this design: 1. 2. 3. 4. minimize the measurement uncertainty due to vibrations of the stiff structure, minimize the distortions of the structure due to temperature effects, keep the hardness high for good wear properties, and keep the cost low.

Let's tackle these one at a time-II.A.1. VIBRATIONS We want to drive the natural frequency of the main structure as high as possible. The useful approximations give us the natural frequency as

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II.A.2. THERMAL DISTORTION The strain due to a change in the temperature of the structure is determined by

If we want to know how the thermal strain changes along the length of our structure due to a temperature gradient, we take the derivative to find

We also know (for a 1-D heat flow approximation) that the heat flux is given by

" d! % To minimize the thermal distortion $ T ' for a given heat flow, we need to maximize # dx &

II.A.3. HIGH HARDNESS We can treat the hardness, H, as a direct function of the yield strength:

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II.A.4. COST Finally to keep the cost low, we want to maximize

So, to summarize, we have FOUR design goals, each of which gives us a different performance index: Minimize vibrations:

Minimize thermal distortion:

Maximize hardness:

Minimize cost:

With the multiple stage selection approach we will take each of these individually and make a series of selection charts.

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II.B. First Selection Stage: We will use Ashby's chart 1, with a slope of 1, and the selection area above and left of the line:

We don't want to eliminate too many materials, otherwise, there'd be nothing left for the other criteria to do. Rank ordered list of materials that "passed" this selection stage, from highest performers to lowest: Ceramics Be CFRP Glasses/WC/GFRP Woods/Rock, Stone, Cement/Ti, W, Mo, steel, and Al alloys.

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II.C. Second Selection Stage: We will use Ashby's chart 10, with a slope of 1, and the selection area below and right of the line:

Rank ordered list of materials that "passed" this selection stage, from highest performers to lowest: Ceramics Invar SiC/W, Si, Mo, Ag, Au, Be (pure metals) Al alloys Steel Notice that there is some overlap between materials that passed the first stage and those that passed the second. Thats good.

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II.D. Third Selection Stage: We will use Ashby's chart 15, and apply the last two constraints as primary constraints. We want to search in a selection area in the upper left of the chart:

Rank ordered list of materials that "passed" this selection stage, from highest performers to lowest: Glasses Steel/Stone Al alloys/Composites Mg, Zn, Ni, and Ti alloys/Ceramics Compare these in a table: First Selection Stage Ceramics Be CFRP Glasses/WC/GFRP Woods/Rock, Stone, Cement/Ti, W, Mo, steel, and Al alloys
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Second Selection Stage Ceramics Invar SiC/(pure metals) W, Si, Mo, Ag, Au, Be Al alloys Steel

Third Selection Stage Glasses Steel/Stone Al alloys/Composites Mg, Zn, Ni, and Ti alloys/ Ceramics

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The candidate materials that make it through all three stages are STEELS and Al ALLOYS. We might want to relax the selection criteria a bit to take another look at ceramic materials, which appear in two of the lists. The main advantage of this multiple stage selection process is that the assumptions are simple and clearly stated regarding the rank ordering of the performance indices. The disadvantage is that it is still subjective in determining the rank ordering and the position of the selection lines on each of the charts. The quantitative approach to multiple constraints combines the decision matrices and selection stages with coupling equations and/or penalty functions. These are topics well look at next.
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ME480/580: Materials Selection Tutorial Overview Notes on CES-Edupack Winter 2011

INTRODUCTION TO CES (CAMBRIDGE ENGINEERING SELECTOR)-EDUPACK SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS

Nomenclature: Throughout these notes references to buttons or icons that should be clicked will be given in BOLD and pull-down menu items will be given in ITALICS . 1) Log onto your Engineering account. 2) Once in Windows, open the MIME Apps and start the CES-EduPack 2010 program. (We still have the older version, CES Selector 3.1, on-line. Dont use it by mistake!)

INSIDE CES: You will see the WELCOME screen when you startup, and a Choose Configuration window. There are three levels of material and process database information in this version of the software: Level 1: about 70 materials and 70 processes, with a limited set of property data; Level 2: about 100 materials and 110 processes, with an extended set of property data; Level 3: about 3000 materials with a comprehensive data set for each. 1) For now, choose English -- Level 1 until you are used to the program. Later on well switch to Level 3 to use all the information for doing problems and the design project. 2) You should now be in the main program control window. At the top on the left, you should see the database you are using, along with a pull down menu for the TABLE
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(MaterialUniverse), and SUBSET (Edu Level 1). You will also see a toolbar with several icons along the top of the main window. These are how you will interact with CES.

CES INFORMATION: There is a large amount of on-line help and database information available in CES. 1) You should automatically be in the browsing tool, but if not click on the BROWSE tab to see the information in the materials database. 2) Double click on a folder to open it. Eventually you'll work your way through the hierarchy to an individual material record. Take a look at the materials record. This is the database information that has been developed for each material in the database. 3) You can change the database to browse by choosing a different TABLE or SUBSET from the pull-down menus. Try several different tables to see what they offer. 4) You may also change databases by clicking on the CHANGE button. If you change to Level 3, you will find SEVEN different TABLES, and a larger number of SUBSETS. Within the Level 3 MaterialsUniverse, for example, there are a number of SUBSETS, including All Bulk Materials, Ceramics, Foams, Magnetic Materials, Metals, Polymers, and Woods. You might use these to narrow down a selection process to a smaller class of materials. 5) You can also SEARCH the database using the SEARCH button. Nuf said. 6) Reference material is also available on-line, as well as an on-line help function. Click on the HELP button or the menu item. The "CES InDepth" is an on-line reference book about CES and the selection process we have been using in class. In fact, all of the appendices form the textbook can be found in here (if you know where to look!) 7) There are also video tutorials and getting started guides that you can access if you want to learn more about the capabilities of the program. 8) For the last thing to do on this part, click on the TOOLS button and select OPTIONS. Click on the UNITS tab to set the preferred units of the data. Choose the currency you want to use for cost analysis here. This also allows you to set the units for the selection charts. Choose SI (consistent) for the unit system. (HINT: using USD [$] instead of Myanmar Kyat would probably be a good idea).

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MAKING A SELECTION CHART (the cool stuff): 1) Click on the SELECT tab to start. (Alternatively, you can choose the NEW PROJECT menu item in the File Menu.) You will need to choose a database and subset to use in the selection project. 2) Now click on the NEW GRAPH STAGE icon on the toolbar or from the SELECT menu. (The toolbar buttons are, from left to right, NEW GRAPH STAGE, NEW LIMIT STAGE, NEW TREE STAGE.) 3) You should get a window with the "Graph Stage Wizard" title. Make sure that the XAXIS tab is selected, and then use the ATTRIBUTES pull-down menu to choose the material property to plot on the x-axis. Choose YIELD STRENGTH (ELASTIC LIMIT) from the pull down list. 3) Click on the Y-AXIS tab to set the material property for the Y-axis. 4) Select YOUNG'S MODULUS from the ATTRIBUTES menu. 5) Click OK. 6) You should now have a new window labeled "Stage: 1" with a graph of your selection chart, showing on the right side of the screen, along with a new tool bar row with about 16 icons on it.

CHANGING AND USING A SELECTION CHART: 1) Click on the STAGE PROPERTIES icon (the first icon on the left of the new tool bar.) 2) You can now change the axes of the active stage. Change the SCALES to be LINEAR in both X and Y. Click OK. Now you know why the data is usually plotted on a log-log plot. 3) Click on any bubble on the chart to find out what the material is. Drag the pop-up label around, and it should leave a connecting line behind pointing to the bubble. Doubleclicking on a bubble brings up the materials data sheet for that material. 4) Delete the label by selecting it with the mouse and pushing the DELETE key. 5) Change the axes back to log-log. 6) There are three types of selection tools you can use: point-line, gradient-line, and box. These are the icons that follow the CURSOR icon.
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7) For simple or primary constraints, you should use the BOX selection tool. Click on the BOX button. Then click on a point in the selection chart and drag the mouse to enclose a set of materials in the box. Note that the STATUS BAR (at the bottom left of the screen) gives you the X,Y location of your cursor in the plot units. Note also that any material bubble that is partly inside the selection box is colored, while the others are greyed-out. The colored bubbles have been selected by the selection process, and now show up as a list in the RESULTS section on the left side. 8) Now click on the GRADIENT-LINE selection tool button. Type in the slope of the selection criterion (line slope) you want (use 1 for now), and click OK. 9) Click on some X-Y position to position the line, and the line will be drawn for you at that location. Notice that the STATUS BAR shows you the value of the selection criterion for the line position you have chosen, along with the value of M for that line (be wary of the units, though!). The final step is to click either ABOVE or BELOW the line to tell the program which region is the selection region. Again, colored materials have passed this selection, and greyed materials have failed. 10) Moving the cursor onto the selection line allows you to reposition the selection line for higher or lower M values. If you want to change the slope, you can start over by clicking the GRADIENT-LINE selection tool button again. 11) Note that you may have only ONE selection criterion operating at a time on a single selection chart. If you want more than one criterion for a particular set of x-y axes, you need to make-up additional STAGES with the same axes and apply the other selection criteria to those. 12) The RESULTS section in the left of the window shows you the materials passing your selection criterion. You can modify the results section by using the pull-down menu to choose what results to view. This is especially helpful when using multiple stages. 13) Finally, you can save this set of selection criterion to disk and recall it later using the SAVE PROJECT menu item. In the FILE menu

A MULTIPLE STAGE EXAMPLE: We want to do a materials selection for a high quality precision measuring system, essentially a top line micrometer (we did this one in class as our example of a multiple stage selection process). After extensive analysis, we have found that we need a material that will produce a LOW THERMAL DISTORTION (M1 = / ), LOW VIBRATION (M2 = (E / )1/2), maximize the HARDNESS (M3 = H), and minimize the cost (M4 = 1/C ).

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1) First you will need to start with a clean project. In the FILE menu click on the NEW PROJECT item. We will use the EduLevel 1: Materials database for this example. Make sure this is set up in the selection data section. 2) Stage 1 will deal with M1: Click NEW GRAPHICAL STAGE selection, and in the X-Axis properties choose the THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY property. For the Y-Axis properties choose THERMAL EXPANSION COEFFICIENT, and click on the OK button. 3) Now click on the GRADIENT-LINE selection tool button. Type in the slope of the selection criterion you want (use 1), and click OK. Locate the point for = 10 [W/m-C], and =1 X 10-6 [1/C]. (Remember that you can use the Status Bar at the bottom of the window to tell you the X-Y position of the cursor.) Click BELOW the line (since we want large and small ). 4) Now that you have a selection criterion on the graph, click on the STAGE PROPERTIES icon. A new tab is available that lets you change the details of your selection- slope, side of the line, and exact location! Use this to place your selection line in exactly the same position that I have used (X = 10, Y = 1). If youve done everything the same as I have, you should see SEVEN candidate materials in results list. 5) Stage 2 will deal with M2: Click NEW GRAPHICAL STAGE, and in the X-Axis properties choose the DENSITY. In the Y-Axis properties choose YOUNG'S MODULUS, and click on the OK button. 6) Now click on the GRADIENT-LINE selection tool button. Type in the slope of the selection criterion you want (use 1), and click OK. Locate the point for E = 2 x 109 [Pa], and = 100 [kg/m3]. Click ABOVE the line (since we want large E and small ). 7) If you click on the STAGE PROPERTIES button while in Stage 2 you can choose to turn off or on the display to show the RESULT INTERSECTION, those materials that have passed all the stages so far. If you only want to see the materials that pass, choose to HIDE FAILED RECORDS. (I don't recommend this at the beginning!). Your results list should show SIX materials now that pass both selection criterion. 8) Stage 3 will deal with M3 and M4: Click NEW GRAPHICAL STAGE, and for the XAxis properties we have to do something fancy. There is not a property listed for COST, but there are properties PRICE [USD/kg] and [kg/m3]. First, for the x-axis, click on the ADVANCED button. You should see a hierarchical list of all the materials properties available. Click on the GENERAL PROPERTIES in the pull-down menu and you will see a list of the general properties. By choosing properties from the list and using the math function buttons, you can set up quite complicated materials selection axes. Wow! Isn't this cool? Select PRICE and multiply it by DENSITY to get the X-axis to be the [USD/volume] you need for minimum cost design. Click OK. We should also change the name of the axis to at least include the UNITS!!!! (something like MATERIAL COST [$/m^3]) so we know what we are looking at in the selection chart.
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9) In the Y-Axis properties choose HARDNESS-VICKERS, and click on the OK button. 10) Now click on the BOX selection tool button. Use the box to select the materials with a MATERIAL COST less than 10,000 [USD/m3], and a HARDNESS greater than 1 x 109 [Pa]. 11) Go to the RESULTS window and check your results. You can view the selection criteria you have used here, as well as the materials that have passed each stage. If you have done this problem the same way I have, you will end up with three materials passing: Al Alloys, Silicon, and Silicon Carbide. NOTES: You may only search one database at a time. To change databases: 1) Click the CHANGE button in the Selection Data section and select the database you want to search. 2) Then choose the subset of materials you want to Select From You can fiddle with this, for instance, by choosing to look only at ceramics or metals. Once you have developed a selection stage, changing databases does not change your selection stage(s) or selection criteria. CES will automatically run through the selection process using the new database whenever you change databases. It's easy to search the other databases this way. My advice is to always start off with the ALL BULK MATERIALS subset in the LEVEL 3 database, and use the others as your design develops. (If you do this now, you should have 14 candidate materials from the three stage selection, using the Level 3 database.)
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ME480/580: Materials Selection Lecture Notes for Case Study Winter 2011

CASE STUDIES IN MATERIALS SELECTION: POLYMER FOAMS


("Polymeric Foams", Klempner and Frisch, 1991; "Plastic Foams" Frisch and Saunders, 1973)

Why look at foams? EXAMPLE: Simply supported beam in bending- minimum mass (or cost). Assume b, L, are fixed, h is free, and the center deflection under load, F, is limited.

Use Rule of Mixtures to determine foam properties, e.g. 90% air foam:

SOthis means the foam material, which is 90% nothing with no properties, has a performance nearly FIVE TIMES the solid polymer beam ( or, looked at another way, for hf = 2hs you can get the same deflection with 80% less mass!). One can also laminate the surface of foams with a high strength layer to drive strength/weight ratio even farther up.

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Foams also have energy absorption properties due to the compressibility of the gas in the cells. New materials classFoamed metals (Al and steel) behave exactly the same way! Foams are nifty! TYPES OF POLYMER FOAMS:

Gas-dispersed foams, using "blowing agents" Syntactic foams, using hollow spheres of glass or plastic. Open-cell vs. closed-cell.

POLYURETHANE FOAMS: Most widely used. Depending on chemistry can vary their properties from flexible cushions to rigid foams for structural applications, with density ranging from 0.0096-0.96 Mg/m3. Can be made in a continuous process as a "bun" 2-8 feet wide X 1-5 feet thick X 10-60 feet long.

Can be processed as "integral skin" foams. POLYSTYRENE FOAMS: Also very widely used in the form of extruded blocks. Formed by: 1. Force volatile liquid (neopentane) into crystalline spheres of PS ( ~ 0.96 Mg/m3) 2. Pre-expansion done with steam, spheres expand to 0.016-0.16 Mg/m3. 3. Final-expansion in a mold with steam heat, spheres fuse together. ABS FOAMS: Used in pallets, and as structural material in furniture.

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SYNTACTIC FOAMS: Use hollow microspheres (30 micron diameter) of glass, ceramic, or plastic for difficult to foam materials, such as epoxies. ARCHITECTURAL USES OF FOAMS: Besides insulating properties (PUR foams among the lowest thermal conduction materials), can also be used as a primary structural material, as in this University of Michigan study from the late 60's. Major controlling factor: keeping within small elastic and creep deformation limits. Looked at double-curved shells. Several different approaches: POLYSTYRENE SPIRAL GENERATION

POLYURETHANE SPRAY APPLICATION

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FOLDED PLATE STRUCTURES WITH POLYURETHANE/PAPER BOARDS

FILAMENT WINDING ON PUR BOARD

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