Exploring the Advantages of Materials Design in a Product Design Process

In this paper, we explore the benefits of materials design in a product design process. We also compare the methods of material selection and materials design by demonstrating two examples—the design of a cantilever beam for minimum weight and the design of a fan blade for minimum weight. The design of the cantilever beam is carried out using Ashby’s material selection method as well as a proposed method for materials design. The design of the fan blade and its material is completed using computational tools. Our goal in this paper is to demonstrate the benefits of materials design over material selection methods and to illustrate the flexibility inherent in materials design processes. We are more interested in revealing the possibilities of materials design, rather than the specific results from the example problems. The investigation of materials design presented in this paper moves us one step closer towards the realization of a systematic, inductive method for the concurrent design of products and materials.