welcome to the first video in our ansys innovation course on material performance
today we'll be defining material performance and investigating how this can influence our
material selection during product design as i said in our introduction material performance
is something we experience every day it's how a material behaves once in service in a product
but how does this performance influence what material i choose for a specific product
let's take a simple example a dinner plate it should hold the weight of my food during
the duration of my meal it can't react with my food that wouldn't be very good
it needs to stand up to washing preferably in a dishwasher and it shouldn't break if i set it
on the countertop a little bit too roughly but it doesn't necessarily need to withstand a fall
from my hands all the way to the floor it's this material's properties influenced by its structure
and processing that dictate how it'll perform once it's been created into my dinner plate
as i said this is a pretty simple example let's consider something more difficult say this
a total hip replacement the reason that this might be implanted is vast
from old age a bad fracture arthritis maybe you know someone in your family or group of
friends who's need their hip replaced i know i do whatever the reason this hip implant must
be able to withstand sufficient loads from the human body during activities such as walking
it must be corrosion and fatigue resistant fatigue meaning withstanding repeated loading
the cup and ball joint segment of the implant must provide low friction
and low wear if i'm having this implant put in because i lost my natural cartilage in my hip
due to arthritis i want to make sure that my new joint will move smoothly
and the body shouldn't react to these materials in any adverse way
this is a much stricter more complex set of requirements than for my dinner plate
yet this is a product that's out in the world used by many people every day with no issue
let's go back to our simple example of a dinner plate this one is made out of a ceramic material
maybe you have a similar one at home is this the best material for this application
i could have made it out of lead that would have held the weight of my food
but lead toxic to humans not really ideal for my dinner plate can it made out of silicone silicone
is a material that's often used in the kitchen for example i have a set of silicone muffin cups
but silicone can be quite flexible don't really want a floppy dinner plate i can make this plate
out of gold i don't really want to spend that kind of money on a dinner plate if i'm manufacturing
this plate i want to make a profit so i need to make sure that the material i'm choosing its
production costs are low enough that i'm able to make a profit based on my target audience
now dinner plates are used depending on the meal all over the world is this the best material based
on the local environment and economy could i be using a local material to make my dinner plates
there are so many different criteria that we need to consider when designing products
that go beyond even how the material will technically perform once it's in my product
now the field of materials is vast in the last 100 years we've gone from around 100
engineering materials to tens of thousands how do we as engineers and designers begin
to think about materials in a useful way when thinking about material performance and selection
in the next video in this ansys innovation course we'll be investigating material families
as a way to break down the large field of materials into smaller more manageable pieces
again my name is dr Kaitlin tyler and thank you for joining me today