Folks... I am developing a data 1

[WKTaylor]

Folks...

I am developing a data base for the wide range of engineering materials used within my company.

As such, I am looking for YOUR in-put regarding the following:

A. What would a USEFUL material database "format" LOOK LIKE??? IE: How should data be represented and how should flow-down paths to material properties(*) be represented?? I have outined [below] some useful material properties... any others I'm missing???
1. mechanical [strength, stiffness, toughness, etc]
2. physical [chemistry, forms available, etc]
3. environmental deterioration/afffects [corrosion, chemical resistance, etc]
4. fabrication, usage and limitations [machinability, weldability, bondability, formability, testing, etc]
5. useful information such as availability, cost, obsolecence, etc.
6. application specs and specific material stds [Mil-, NAS, ASTM, AMS, comapny stds, etc]

B. What do You consider essential/useful/specific material properties(*) for the following materials families:
1. metals
2. plastics and rigid foams.
3. elastomers [monolithic & reinforced]
4. adhesives & sealants & primers [epoxy, acrylic, silicone, polysulphide, urethane, etc]
5. fiber-reinforcement materials [glass, graphite, kevlar, ceramic, fibers-tape-cloth, etc]
6. inorganic & organic finishes [anodize, alodine, primer, polyurethane, etc]
7. ceramics and glass
8. Sandwich-Panels [honeycomb panels, facings, core, etc]
9. petroleum products [Oil, grease, solvent, coolant, etc]
10. non-petroleum based cleaners [water-based detergents, alcohol, etc]
11. expendable manufacturing materials [gloves, rags, tape, vacuum bag film, putties, knives, tool-bits, etc]
Regards, Wil Taylor

 

[BLN]

It sounds like a hefty job. Just amassing the material properties will keep you busy for some time.

I had started to list some of the things to add and realized I could be here the rest of the afternoon working on the list. If you want to see how an excellent materials database is set up, go to

http://www.matweb.com.

I visit there frequently. You can search for a specific material, for a specific property, vendor, trade name, etc.

Survey your customers. Who in your company will use the database, and what do they want to find in it.

Good luck.

 

[WKTaylor]

BLN... Thanks... very useful website!

I noticed they "vend" their search engine SW suite, which is a plus! Regards, Wil Taylor

 

[tedg]

Wil:

Further to BLN's good suggestions, you might note:

1. The Handbook of ASM International provides a useful method of presenting mechanical and physical properties of materials. You could use similar headings as a template. The Handbook is available in most public reference libraries

2. If you were going to include data on steel and non-ferrous alloys for use in mold design and mold making, I would be glad to try and help, because mold materials are a long-standing interest of mine.

Good luck with what sounds like a big job.

 

[renu]

Wil: Just saw your posting at the site. We are in the business of supporting "material data librarians" and would love to talk about this in more detail with you. This may not be the appropriate forum for our discussion. Thank you.

 

I find the 'materials tool' that is most needed is one that advises a material & grade for a particular job function, matched to the grades available int that particular country, cross referencing ANSI,ISO,EN etc...

 

[joescan]

Also a try

http://www.azom.com The A to Z of Materials

 

[MsMombo]

Wil,

My dream database would allow me to
a) earmark frequently accessed reference material, and
b) add my own notes in a searchable "comments" box for each material.

Good luck with your project.

 

[knobhead]

Material tradenames and nicknames too. Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.

 

[jahm]

I like the range of data output formats available in a database I use at

http://www.jahm.com

 

[JimMetalsCeramics]

You should track down one of the annual Materials Engineering handbook editions. It was published by Penton.

 

[brad]

I deal with CAE, and most materials databases are woefully lacking in such information.

If you have a CAE group in your company and are intending on addressing their needs, then you may want some of the following:
Metals: material behavior in the plastic region (preferably processed in mechanics terms; not engineering stress-strain)

Elastomers: various hyperelastic constitutive variables for common hyperelastic models; lacking that, proper test information from which engineers can derive this.

There's plenty of other such information that is useful to CAE analysts; if you have such a group, go ask them (as the useful information is dependent on what type of work they are doing).

Brad

 

[chrisbullough]

I have been involved in company material databases for gas turbine applications for a few years, and my first comment (born of experience!) is to try to provide what is really required and not what is "nice to have". I think that your list is a great start, and with comments from others inside and outside the company should should end up with a good scope. But to try to cover everything from the start may mean that the database will never be completely populated. Hence, set your priorities early on.

My next question is: who will really use the database? If it is mainly your CAE users then consider saving yourself the effort of integrating your database with their tools by going for a Materials Database management system off the shelf that already does that (eg. MSC.Mvision or Cambridge Materials Selector). That way you can spend 80% of your time worrying about the data and 20% of the time worrying about your system, and not vice versa.

Whether you use industry sources of data (such as azom and matweb) depends very much on your company philosophy. There are some great sources of information on the web, but for high end applications you must consider whether such sources are truly appropriate to your product, manufacturing route, and design methods. The main question is: can you and should you trust such data? Would such data stand up in a court of law if there was a product liability issue? (If your company policy is always to use/trust external data sources then you can ignore this point.) To my mind, the best data are those from your own labs, generated on material products that are the same or close to those used in service.

A possible approach is to have a gateway to your main materials database via a web page, and put some of the subsidiary information as links, eg to pdf files of older company design handbooks, or to external sources (perhaps stressing that the data gleaned from such sites should only be used with approval of a company materials engineer)

Try also to think of the process of providing data. How will you release and revise the data, for example? What happens if you change a dataset: what is affected, who is informed? Perhaps also consider: what is the process of evaluating test data to provide design data?

I'd be happy to send a couple of printed publications relating to our experience, if you are interested then please send me have your contact details via enquiry.material@power.alstom.com

Good luck with your project. Regards, Chris.

 

[chrisbullough]

Seems like my last post killed the discussion - sorry about that!

Anyway, anyone interested in this matter might like to know that there is a half-day session at ASM's Materials Solutions 2003: "Developments in Web-based Materials Property Databases V" (Pittsburgh, 15 October 2003).

Regards, Chris

 

[mloew]

All,

Wil Taylor has not logged in since 14 Feb 2003.




Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew

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