Material Property Chart

Key points and distinction between Steel (Low Carbon Steel) and Hybrid

Material property charts are of two types:

 Bar charts: plots one property for all the set in the material universe. The length of each
bar shows the range of the property for each material. Logarithmic scales are employed
to bunch outliers with a certain bucket. Remember also that logarithmic scale is
different from linear scale in that the former increases by a factor of 10
 Bubble charts: If two properties are plotted a bubble chart is formed. The material
family are grouped together in an envelope. Also, a logarithm scale is again used. They
are tools used for optimizing selection.
With the bubble chart, different families occupy discrete areas of the chart.

From the bar plot above,

We could see that metals range from about 20Gpa to about 200Gpa. Polymers however ranges
from about 0.1Gpa to about 7Gpa. On average metals are about a 110Gpa in stiffness and
110
polymers about 4.05Gpa making polymers smaller by a factor of 2.06 ≈ 50.
 110
Again, Hybrids have an average of 60Gpa elastic modulus and is lower to a factor of about ≈
60
2
Elastomers on the other hand, has an average stiffness of about.

Modulus Density Chart (Granta CES Edu pack)

We see technical ceramics and Metals with high moduli greater than 10Gpa and densities that
are not less than 1.7mg/m3.
Hybrids however, has moduli greater 10Gpa and also has densities not less than 1.7.
If we zoom more closely however we will see that all CFRP – carbon fiber reinforced polymers
have moduli in the range of 100-200Gpa, while steel has about 200-300Gpa, it is heavier by a
𝟖
factor of about 𝟏.𝟒 ≈ 𝟓.
Modulus-Relative Cost Chart

Note that to normalize a variable means to convert the values of the variable within a scale of 0
and 1.
We see that carbon steel has a relative cost per volume within the range of 0.8 to 2, while CFRP
ranges between 10 to 30 Relative cost per unit volume leaving on average a factor of about
15
≈ 20 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑙
1
Strength-Density Chart

Steel has a wider range 200-103Mpa with about 8tons/m3. Its rival is about 700-100Mpa but
weighs much less about 2tons/m3 leaving a factor of about 4 lighter
If we add a constraint of say strength > 10Mpa and density less than 10 tons
We can keep adjusting the constraint which eventually leaves us with the family Aluminum, and
CFRP.
Modulus-Strength

Higher modulus recorded for steel than CFRP but almost the same strength
 Fracture -Toughness Modulus

Although the steel has a wider range of fracture toughness which gives it an advantage in terms
of fracture allowing for creep, CFRP has a shorter range.
Fracture toughness for steel is between 10-200Mpa, whilst between about 7-20Mpa. However,
the strength of CFRP is comparable to steels, i.e. CFRP has strengths of about 100Gpa whilst
steel about 200GPa giving a factor of about 2
Wear Rate-

Low carbon steel, the material for which transformer tanks are made of is has a hardness rating
of between 1000- 2000Mpa
Thermal Expansion-Thermal Conduction
Strength-Max Service Temperature

We can see that both carbon steel and CFRP have approximately the same yield strength, their
maximum service temperature differs. Carbon steel presents a higher service temperature to
CFRP
Strength-Embodied Energy

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.

First hand we see that CFRP is about 4*105 MJ/m3 while carbon steel is about 2*105 MJ/m3,
making CFRP have a high embodied energy with a factor of about 2

Design Considerations

Function Transformer Tank

Objectives Low Cost, less weight, fracture toughness, anti-corrosive,

House of Quality
This tool helps to sieve through the plethora of design variables bringing to the fore the most
correlated or most important to the customer or client.
It looks like there seem to be a conflicting reason why we should choose steel over CFRP or vice
versa. Which should we use, well it depends on what the customer wants. A major umbrella
over all the customers is the US dept. energy. This organization regulates the transformer tank
industry.
To design a transformer tank, the potential customer, however, is US department of energy. To
be able to design a tank that satisfies this customer, a house of quality is used to identify critical
design variable insitu.

House of quality description

See figure below;

The left hand side highlights customer requirements which are usually derived from market
segment survey. A weighting scheme of 1, 3, 5, and 5 being the highest, is used to weight the
requirements. The percentage of each weight is calculated and placed beside each weight.
Worthy of not is that there exits a ‘subjectiveness’ in the development of this HOQ, if done
alone. To mitigate against this kind of subjectiveness it is required that the HOQ be populated
by a diverse group of stakeholders.
The middle side contains sysmbols that also represent strengths of dependencies. The circle
with a dot has a strength of 9, the bare circle has a strength of 3, and the the triangle
represents weak dependencies which is 1.
Importance rating to find importance rating for cost of production for example, we multiply the
value of the strength of the dependencies on each customer requirement by the weight of the
customer requirement and sum them. In the fugure above, the importance rating for cost of
production is (9*0.04)+(3*0.12)+(9*0.12)+(9*0.16)+(1*0.12)+(3*0.16) + (9*0.2) = 5.64

What is the physical meaning of these numbers, weight is the least design variable that impact
on our customer requirements, and cost of production is the most important variable that
impact on our customer requirements. If we want to improve anything cost of production is
what we need to go for.
Another way to put it is that in satisfying the customer, weight has little to do with giving the
customer joy. By the way the design variables are measureable design quantities.

Roof Top
The roof top studies the correlation between the design variables we are in control of.
One thing to note though is that although we cannot control our customer’s desire, we can
however control our design to meet the customer’s taste. In the roof top, correlations are
denoted with a ++ (strong positive correlation) indicating that as one variable goes up the other
one goes up proportionately, +(slightly correlated), -- (strong negative correlation) indicating
that has one entity goes up the other goes down, proportionately. No correlation will have no
symbol at all.
The utility here is that if I go back to the importance rating and I wish to improve say, expected
life, expected life is strongly correlated with battery, and carrying out an improvement on the
battery will actually impact on the expected life.
The up and down triangles at the base of the roof suggests if variable going up is better, or
variable going down is better. For example in the figure above, cost of production as a variable
is preferred to go down, represented by the shaded inverted triangle. On the other hand, the
speaker variable is preferred ro go up.

Energy Dissipation in STRUCTURAL Material

To select a material from vibration point of view, we will have to consider the following
 Deflection, where stiffness becomes important
 Strength, ultimate tensile strength