Material Selection

Environmentally Conscious Design
& Manufacturing
Class : Material Selection
Agenda
• Generic automobile materials
• Engineering materials
• Properties of materials
• Guidelines for materials selection
• Steels, cast iron, alloys, and ceramics
• Materials and environments
Generic Automobile Materials
The Flow of AluminumUnit: kg
Materials Use in Automobile
Unit: kg
Design Process
Need for a device Product Function?
or product
Synthesis
Redesign
(Creativity-Ideas)
Change
Material selection
• material?
• process?
Product part
Satisfactory (prototype)
Unsatisfactory
Evaluate Put Part
performance into Service
Engineering Materials
• Ferrous metals: carbon, alloy, stainless, and tool and
die steels
• Nonferrous metals and alloys: aluminum, magnesium,

copper, nickel, titanium, low-melting alloys
• Plastics: thermoplastics, thermosets, and elastomers

• Ceramics: glass ceramics, glasses, graphite, and
diamond
• Composite materials: reforced plastics, metal-matrix

and ceramic-matrix composites, and honeycomb
structures.
Engineering Materials (cont.)
High strength, Moderate modulus, High ductility
Metals High modulus

Low modulus Poor corrosion Resistance
High strength Abrasion resistant
Polymers Ceramics
creep at low temp brittle
Composites
Corrosion resistant Corrosion resistant
Elastomers Glasses
creep at low temp Brittle
Properties of Materials
• Mechanical properties: strength, toughness, ductility,
hardness, elasticity, fatigue, and creep
• Physical properties: density, thermal expansion,
conductivity, specific heat, melting point, and electrical
and magnetic properties
• Chemical properties: oxidation, corrosion, toxicity,
and flammability
• Manufacturing properties: castability, formability,
machinability, weldability, and hardenability by heat
treatment.
Properties of Materials (cont.)
Environmental Aspects
Composition Recycling
Production
Resource depletion
Energy Effluents
Guidelines for Materials Selection
Traditional guidelines for materials selection:
• Desired mechanical, physical, and chemical

properties
• Shapes of commercially available materials
• Reliability of supply
• Cost of materials and processing
Guidelines for Materials Selection (Cont.)
Guidelines for materials selection from the
ECDM viewpoint:
• Choose abundant, non-toxic, nonregulated

materials
• Choose materials familiar to nature
• Choose easily recycled materials
• Minimize environmental impact without loss
of product quality
Low-Impact Materials
 Non-hazardous materials
 Non-exhaustable/renewable materials
 Low-energy content materials
 Recycled and recyclable materials
Energy Aspects
• Energy to mine raw materials
• Energy to extract and refine ore
• Energy to from product
• Energy to ship product
• Energy to use product
• Energy to disposal of product
Material Recyclability
 Part is remanufacturable – Example: starter, transmission
 Steel, aluminum, lead, and copper have good recycling
records.
 Organic material for energy recovery, that cannot be
recycled. Example: Tires, rubber in hoses.
 Inorganic material with no known technology for recycling.
Material Life Extension
•Types of recycled material
• home scrap
• pre-consumer
• post-consumer
•Design considerations
• ease of disassembly
• material identification
• simplification and parts consolidation
• material selection and compatibility
Improvements of Existing Products
• Substitution (water based coatings instead of
volatile organic compounds)
• Reformulation (e.g., unleaded gasoline is a

reformulation of the leaded variety)
• Elimination
Reduced Material Intensiveness
• Dematerialization
- Less materials means less consumption,
saves energy and money.
• Shared use of product
• Integration of functions
• Functional optimization of product and
components
Reduction of Material Usage
•Weight reductions reduce energy needed to move
the product.
•Avoid over-dimensioning the product via good
design
•Reduction in volume (space required for transport
and storage)
Example (Xerox)
Source: Calkin, P., 1998

The Results of Efforts
• Reduced solid waste generation by 73 percent
• Increased the factory recycle rate by 141
percent
• Reduced releases to the environment by 94
percent
• Realized over $ 200 million in annual savings
Steels
Plain carbon steels
• Low-carbon steel (0.02% - 0.3%C), used for manufacturing
bolts and nuts, bars and rods
• Medium-carbon steel (0.3% - 0.6 %C), used to harden tools
such as hammers, screw drivers, and wrenches.
• High-carbon steel (0.6 % - 1.5%C), for edge cutting tools
such as punches, dies, taps, and reamers.
Alloy steels
• Addition of alloying elements (Cr, Mn, Mo, Ni, T, V)
improves mechanical properties of steels
Cast Iron
• Alloy of iron and carbon (1.7%-4.5%C)
• Gray cast iron, used in machine tool, automotive,
and other industries
• White cast iron, used for the production of malleable
iron casting
• Chilled cast iron, used for products with wear-resisting
surface
• Alloy cast iron, used in automotive engine, brake,
and other systems, machine tool casting, etc.
• Malleable iron castings, used in industrial applications
that require a highly machinable metal, great strength
ductility and resistance to shock.
Aluminum and its Alloy
Properties:
• High strength-to-weight ratio
• Resistance to corrosion
• High thermal and electrical conductivity
• nontoxicity, ease of recycling
• reflectivity, ease of machinability
Uses:
• Con and foil
• Construction (building etc.)
• Transportation (aircraft, automobile, etc.)
• Electrical conductors, and appliances
Nonferrous Alloys
• Copper-based alloys (ex. Brasses and bronzes)
- good strength, hardness, conductivity.
• Aluminum-based alloys
- increased tensile strength, weldability, ductility
• Nickel-based alloys
- high strength and corrosion resistance
• Zinc-based alloys
- good corrosion resistance, strength, and ductility
Ceramics
• Types
Oxide ceramics, carbides, nitrides, cermets, sialon
• General properties
Brittle, high strength, high hardness, low toughness,
low density, low thermal expansion, and low thermal and
electrical conductivity
• Applications
Automobile components, electronics, cutting tools, fiber
optics
Material consumption and its growth
Speaking globally, we consume roughly 10 billion tones of
engineering materials per year.
Polymers come next: 50 years ago their consumption was tiny;
today the combined consumption of commodity polymers
polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP)
and polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) begins to approach that of
steel.
If the current rate of consumption in tones per year is C
The doubling time tD of consumption rate is given by setting C/C0 = 2

The material life cycle and criteria for assessment
The material life cycle and criteria for assessment
Ore and feedstock, drawn from the earth’s resources, are

processed to give materials;
These are manufactured into products that are used and
at the end of their lives
◦ Discarded,
◦ a fraction perhaps entering a recycling loop,
◦ the rest committed to incineration
◦ Or landfill.
Life-cycle assessment and energy
Energy and materials are consumed at each point in

this cycle (called ‘phases’),
with an associated penalty of CO2, SOx, NOx and
other emissions—heat, and gaseous, liquid and
solid waste, collectively called
environmental ‘stressors’.
These are assessed by the technique of life-cycle
analysis (LCA)
A rigorous LCA examines the life cycle of a product and

assesses in detail the eco-impact created by one or more
of its phases of life, cataloging and quantifying the
stressors.
This requires information for the life history of the
product at a level of precision that is only available after
the product has been manufactured and used.
It is a tool for the evaluation and comparison of existing
products, rather than one that guides the design of those
that are new.
A full LCA is time-consuming and expensive, and it
cannot cope with the problem that 80% of the
environmental burden of a product is determined
in the early stages of design, when many decisions
are still fluid
This has led to the development of more
approximate ‘streamline’ LCA methods that seek to
combine acceptable cost with sufficient accuracy to
guide decision-making, the choice of materials
being one of these decisions.
This perception has led to efforts to condense the
eco-information about a material production into a
single measure or
indicator,
normalizing and
weighting each source of stress
to give the designer a simple, numeric ranking.
The use of a single-valued indicator is criticized by
some.
Definitions and measurement: embodied energy,
process energy and end of life potential
Embodied energy Hm and CO2 footprint
The embodied energy of a material is the energy that must
be committed to create 1 kg of usable material—1 kg of
steel stock, or of PET pellets, or of cement powder, for
example—measured in MJ/kg.
The CO2 footprint is the associated release of CO2, in kg/kg

Definitions and measurement: embodied
energy, process energy and end of life potential
The processing energy Hp associated with a material is
the energy, in MJ, used to shape, join and finish 1 kg of
the material to create a component or product.
◦ polymers, typically, are molded or extruded;
◦ metals are cast, forged or machined;
◦ ceramics are shaped by powder methods.
…………..
◦
Recycling: ideals and realities
The fractional contribution of recycled material to current consumption.
For metals, the contribution is large; for polymers, small (2005 data)
Design: selecting materials for eco-design
Case study: crash barriers

Material Selection

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Environmentally Conscious Design

• Nonferrous metals and alloys: aluminum, magnesium,

• Plastics: thermoplastics, thermosets, and elastomers

• Composite materials: reforced plastics, metal-matrix

Metals High modulus

Traditional guidelines for materials selection:

• Desired mechanical, physical, and chemical

• Choose abundant, non-toxic, nonregulated

• Reformulation (e.g., unleaded gasoline is a

Source: Calkin, P., 1998

The doubling time tD of consumption rate is given by setting C/C0 = 2

Ore and feedstock, drawn from the earth’s resources, are

Energy and materials are consumed at each point in

A rigorous LCA examines the life cycle of a product and

The CO2 footprint is the associated release of CO2, in kg/kg

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