Green Materials Selection

Watch Physical_Properties_of_Materials.mp4

Physical Properties of Materials

To select greener materials you need to consider the material’s
environmental, cost, and performance impacts on your design. A material’s
performance depends on its physical properties, and optimizing this is the
most important way to reduce your product’s environmental impact.

Energy use often causes the biggest environmental impact for products that
consume much energy during their use, like refrigerators and cars. Creating
a lighter weight car can save far more energy than reducing the embodied
energy of its materials. Likewise, to make a refrigerator or building more
energy efficient, you’ll need to have good insulation and optimize heat
transfer.

Tools to Identify Physical Properties of Materials

The Eco-Materials Adviser within Autodesk Inventor includes a materials
database that is searchable by properties such as strength, stiffness, density,
price, and thermal conductivity. Conducting this type of analysis on physical
properties of is part of the overall Eco Materials Adviser recommended
workflow.

Students and educators can download Autodesk Inventor and other Autodesk
software free of charge in the Autodesk Education Community Download
Center.

Granta’s CES Selector tool is a more full-featured material selection tool that
allows materials to be compared with Ashby Diagrams.

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 Metrics and the Basics of Mechanics
How Does this Apply to Simulation?
Understanding deformation and modes of failure is a major goal of simulation.
A good analysis can help you answer questions like:

• Will your design stand up to the loads it will experience in everyday use?
• What about a worst case scenario?
• Can you reduce the weight and amount of material your design uses?

To really understand simulation results, you need a solid understanding the

following basic metrics that the software
considers: force, torque, pressure, stress, etc.

Software simulation is valuable because some of these metrics are often

impossible to calculate by hand for even simple mechanical systems.

Force
Force is basically the push or pull on any object. This is perhaps the most
intuitive of the basic aspects of mechanics. Newton’s second law states that
the sum of forces on an object will equal the mass of that object times its
acceleration (F=ma). If forces on an object do not sum to zero, the object will
accelerate.

Simple force application in FEA

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Torque
Torque is essentially the amount of “twisting force” on an object at a
point. Torque may also be referred to as a “Moment” by engineers.

Torque (represented by the Greek lower case letter tau) is the cross
product of radius and force (τ=r x F). This means that torque will multiply
linearly as force or radius is increased. Think of trying to unscrew a rusty
bolt. It is easier to do this using a longer wrench, since you can apply more
torque with the same amount of force.

A simple moment applied in FEA

Pressure
Pressure is simply force applied over an area, or as a formula
p=F/A. Pressure is a very important to understanding how materials
fail. Remember that pressure is inversely proportional to area. Therefore, a
person wearing snowshoes (which increase the area of their footprint) is able
to walk on snow, while they would sink if they were wearing regular boots.

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A simple pressure applied in FEA

Stress
Stress can be thought of the internal reaction to forces on an object.

This is one of the most important concepts in mechanics of materials,

because materials fail as a result of high stresses. When a force is applied to
an object that is unable to move (constrained in FEA terms) it must react
those forces by deforming.

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Stresses on an object in FEA

Stress can generally be broken down into 3 types: tensile (pulling) stress,
compressive (squeezing) stress, and shear (sliding) stress. Tensile and
compressive stress are often grouped and called normal stresses, as they
acted perpendicular, or “normal to” a surface. Stress is denoted by the Greek
lower case letter sigma (σ). Stress is calculated the same way as pressure,
where σ=F/A.

These kinds of stress can be combined mathematically into a single form

known as Von Mises stress. If the Von Mises stress exceeds the yield point
anywhere in the part then we can expect the material to yield at that
location. As the Von Mises yield criterion is the most empirically accurate way
to judge yielding for ductile materials it is the standard form used in analyzing
part stresses.

Strain and Deformation

Strain is the measure of the deformation (aka displacement) of a
material. For an object being pulled in only one direction this equation is
given simply as ϵ=ΔL\L. That is, strain is the change in length of the material
divided by the original length of the material. It is often given as a
decimal. Strain can also be measured as normal strain, or shear
strain. These two kinds of strain together can be used to fully define the
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deformation of an object. The deformation of an object is often a major
requirement in engineering applications, for example when two parts must not
come into contact under load or when an object must be stiff to retain a
particular geometry.

Displacement in FEA

Stress-Strain Curves
Stress-strain curves are in many ways the key to understanding and applying
the results of simulation analyses. Stress-strain curves are unique for each
material, but many kinds of materials exhibit the same patterns of behavior as
loads are increased.

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A typical stress-strain curve for steel (wikicommons)

Here we can see a stress-strain curve typical of a common ductile material

such as mild steel under tensile loading. At the left side of the graph is the
region where the material’s response is known as “linear-elastic.” Under
elastic deformation the material will deform, but as the load is removed it will
return to its original shape. This can be seen if you lightly flex a long metal
rod, which will bounce back when you stop applying force.

How much the material will deform in the linear elastic range is measured
by Young’s Modulus, which is measured as stress over strain.
Next, if more force is applied, the material will reach its yield strength. This is
known as the yield point, and after this the material will experience “plastic
deformation” or permanent deformation. Note that some materials, such as
aluminum, have different stress-strain curves in which there is no clear
“hump” at the yield strength, and so that number is calculated using a
standard equation for when the material is said to have moved into the plastic
deformation region.

Often, engineering applications want to avoid any permanent deformation, so

the yield stress is used as the limiting stress in simulations. However, in
certain specialized applications, such as crumple zones in a car, a product
may be designed to yield in specific situations. The the amount of energy
absorbed by a material is given by the area under the stress-strain
curve. These advanced applications are beyond the scope of this
explanation. We will also forgo explanations of strain hardening and necking,
although these can be found online.

Brittle materials, such as cast iron and glass, exhibit very different stress-
strain curves than ductile materials. These materials will fracture before
undergoing any appreciable plastic deformation. This can be a very negative
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behavior in many situations, as these materials will likely not give obvious
visual or audible indication before catastrophic failure. Their ultimate tensile
strength may also vary widely based on even small variations in manufacture
or structure.

The stress-strain curves of brittle vs. ductile materials. Note the increased amount of energy
absorbed by ductile materials of similar nature (wikicommons)

Other materials, such as elastomers (which include rubbers) exhibit very

unusual stress-strain curves that will not be covered here.

Factor of Safety
The factor of safety of a design is an easy to understand and very important
number. It is found by dividing the maximum stress possible in the system
(usually the yield strength of the material to prevent permanent deformation)
by the maximum expected load.

Factor of Safety=(Material Strength)/(Design Load)

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For instance, if a material yields at 10 MPa and the maximum expected stress
for a given design is 1 MPa, then the factor of safety is 10. The design would
survive stresses up to 10 times the maximum expected stresses.

Different applications will often have different factors of safety. For example,
buildings may use a factor of safety of 2 for their structural members, while
the factor of safety in aircraft may be lower, often 1.5, which is specified by
the FAA. It is important to note that the factors of safety are sufficient, as the
maximum expected load is a worst-case scenario load (such as an airplane
flying through a hurricane) not standard everyday loads.

A Boeing 787 being tested for wing loading. Note the displacement of the wings. This shows
that the loads the plane is designed to handle are much higher than anything you would see
in everyday flight.

In the picture above of a flexed airplane wing, you can see how much the
wings are flexing at a load just above the maximum operating load. This is a
good example of how the loads used to calculate factor of safety are much
greater than the average you would expect in everyday use.

When designing your parts, a large factor of safety can be an indication that
you could save money and weight by reducing the amount of material used or
using a different material. Try to use thinner parts or cutouts to accomplish
this.

Learning More
There are many places to learn about the mechanics of materials, but
perhaps the best website around is Non Destructive Testing Resource
Center.

Understanding these principles, along with other aspects that can affect
failure such as corrosion, can help prevent your product being sent to an early
grave.

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