In this short Ansys innovation course video we'll be discussing our final material family: hybrids
Hybrids consist of both composites and foams. Composites are defined as having two or more
distinct parts. Now by this definition metallic alloys are considered composites, however a
material is only considered a composite if its constituents or the materials it's made out of
have distinctly different properties from one another. This causes the composite to have very
different properties than its parts. Now when people think of composites they think of race
cars, airplanes, a lot of high-tech applications. When in fact composites are some of the world's
oldest materials and some of the first materials we used when creating products
wood, for example this wooden cutting board I have here. Many natural materials are composites if we
consider the definition. For example wood is a composite of cellulose and lignin. Foams, on the
other hand, are a combination of a solid and a gas. This solid can be a metal, a ceramic, or a polymer
You probably use a foam every day: a sponge. These two examples are made of polymers and they're
quite absorbent for either cleaning your dishes or applying makeup. When discussing the attributes for
hybrids, we're going to break it down into three different categories: natural materials, composites,
and foams. Natural materials have a wide range of properties- just think of how diverse nature is!
Natural materials can fit again in that middle category of stiffness and density
like polymers. Same with fracture toughness and yield strength. Natural materials,
excluding metallic ore, are not very thermally conductive and have high electrical resistivity.
Composites, on the other hand, are known for their stiffness and density. Though they are less dense
than ceramics or metals. Similarly they have fairly high fracture toughness and yield strength.
Composites have a wide range for electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity. Due to the
wide variety of materials that can go into making composites, this property has the most variability.
Finally let's discuss the attributes of foams. Foams are not known for their
stiffness or density, nor are they known for their fracture toughness or yield strength.
There is such a large range for the attributes for foams due to the fact they can be made from
ceramics, polymers, or metals. Thinking back to the attributes for those material families, it makes
sense that ceramic foams will have dramatically different properties than polymer foams.
I know I don't want to use a ceramic foam for cleaning my dishes.
Again because of the different solid material choices the range for electrical resistivity
and thermal conductivity is widely varying. When talking about natural materials people often
say there's no improving on nature. This might be true, there's a very large field that uses
nature as an inspiration-- it's called biomimicry. Take the pads on a gecko's feet for example
They're able to scale plate glass windows with no extra help. By understanding how the skin on
the pads of the gecko's feet is formed we might be able to make a similarly synthetic sticky material.
Moving on to composites as I said before they're often considered for planes, trains, and automobiles
but they have a much wider impact than that. Think of wind turbines for an example
these wind turbine blades. The bigger I can make them, the more energy I can produce from my turbine
By switching from a glass fiber composite to a carbon fiber composite we're able to make
the same size blades and have them be much lighter weight
therefore they're more efficient at creating electricity, which is always the goal
Finally maybe you're thinking there can't be a high-tech application for foams. Foams
are actually really good as filters. Let's say I'm trying to filter some particles out of some water.
I want my water to go over as much surface area of my filter as possible therefore I have the highest
probability of getting out all of these little particulates. A foam has a much higher surface
area than just a flat piece of material, so foams are often used in high-tech filtering applications
We've done it- we've looked at our six different material families: ceramics, glasses, metals,
elastomers, polymers, and now hybrids, which had three in themselves: natural materials, composites,
and foams. But how can we apply this information of material families to our product design and
our material performance? Check out our next video and we'll see how we can use material
families when looking at a list of product requirements in a little game. I'll see you there.