1E12 Materials and Their

Applications
David Taylor
Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering Department

Lecture 1
 What’s It About?
• This module is about materials.
• Materials are used in all fields of engineering: civil; mechanical;
biomedical; electronic.
• A given material is used because it has certain properties, e.g.
mechanical strength, corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity.
• In this module you will learn:
– Which properties are important for a given application
– How these properties are defined and measured
– Why different materials have different properties
 The Lecturers
Because this course covers all branches of engineering (except
computer software engineering) you will be taught by lecturers from the
different departments:

PROFESSOR DAVID TAYLOR

Dept of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering
(Mechanical and Biomedical)

PROFESSOR ROGER WEST

Dept of Civil, Structural and
Environmental Engineering
(Civil and Structural)

PROFESSOR MARTIN BURKE

Dept of Electronic Engineering
(Electronic and Biomedical)
 Lectures, Tutorials, Project
• This is a 10-credit course.
• You get three lectures per week, plus a briefing session about the
project work.
• You get one tutorial each week, when you will answer questions to
test your understanding of the lectures.
• You will carry out a project, working as part of a group.
• The end point of the project will be to design and test your own
material.
• At the end of the semester there will be an exam, which counts for
50% of the total marks, and you have to get a pass mark for the
exam.
• The other 50% comes from reports which you will write as a group,
during the project work.
 Examples of Materials in Different
Engineering Fields
CIVIL: a building made from bamboo
ELECTRONIC: Carbon nanotubes
used in sensors, memory storage devices
etc
 MECHANICAL: Jet engine exhaust
nozzle made from ceramic matrix composite
material.
BIOMEDICAL: Scaffolds for tissue
engineering
 Mechanical Properties
• I will be telling you about the mechanical properties of materials…
• …how to measure them and use them, and where they come from.
• Important for any material which is going to be subjected to
mechanical forces in use.
• e.g. A chair (person’s weight);
• A turbine blade in a jet engine (centrifugal forces);
• The suspension cables of a bridge (weight of bridge and traffic);
• An artificial hip joint (person’s weight and dynamic forces).

• These forces cause the material to deform (i.e. change shape) and
may cause it to fail (i.e. break).
• So we need to know the amount of deformation (as a function of the
force) and the maximum safe force we can apply without failure.
 Useful Reading
• Textbooks by Ashby & Jones: Engineering Materials
books 1 and 2. We use these books in future courses in
Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering.
• Materials by Ashby, Shercliff and Cebon
• Any other textbooks about mechanical properties of
materials.
• “The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don’t
Fall Through the Floor” and other books by J.Gordon
• Lots of information on line, in Wikipedia, company
databases, etc.
 Examples of Failures

A 737 engine; one of the turbine discs broke away and

exited through the engine casing, nearly taking someone’s
head off!
Examples of Failures

X-ray showing an artificial

hip joint, made of metal,
which broke in two whilst
inside someone’s leg.

As an engineer, you don’t

want to be famous for
designing a component that
failed.
 In This Course…
• We will cover the following mechanical properties which are
essential for understanding how any material behaves under load:

• STIFFNESS
• STRENGTH
• TOUGHNESS

• I will also say something about how materials can gradually degrade
and fail over long periods of time, as a result of:

• WEAR
• CREEP
• FATIGUE
 The Tensile Test
FORCE F
• Take a sample of
material
• Pull on the ends to
stretch it
Original Stretch
• Measure the force, F
Length Lo to new
• Measure the stretch,
length L
L-Lo
 Some Practicalities
• You can use any size and shape
of sample provided it has
parallel sides…
• …so the cross section is the
same throughout.
• The shape of the cross section
doesn’t matter, it can be
rectangular (as here), square,
circular, etc. Its area is A. Cross
• Normally we make the ends of Section of
Sample,
the specimen bigger so it’s easy area A
to grip in the testing machine
A tensile testing machine
 The Stress/Strain Curve
• We want to see how much the sample stretches for a
given applied force.
• So we could plot the force, F, against the stretch (L-Lo).
• But it’s better to normalise these quantities, so that the
overall size of the sample doesn’t matter.
• We do this by calculating the STRESS, s, which is F/A
and the STRAIN, e, which is (L-Lo)/Lo.
• These are very important quantities as they form the
basis of most measurements of mechanical properties.
 Any cross section is OK
• The cross section can be any
shape, provided it’s the same all
along the length, so that the
stress is constant.

• For a rectangular cross section,

width W and thickness t, A = Wt

• For a circular section, A = pr2

 Typical Results
• The stress/strain curve has different shapes in different materials;
below are some examples.
• As strain increases, stress can go up or down
• X indicates the point at which the sample breaks

X X X
(units N/m2 = Pa)
Stress s

Strain e (no units)

Types of Stress (and Strain)
• So far we’ve been talking about the tensile test,
in which we apply a pulling force.
• The stress this gives is called tensile stress (not
surprisingly).
• If you push instead of pulling then this is still
known as tensile stress, but it has a negative
value. It’s also called compression.
 Shear

• Shear stress is a type of stress that

causes sliding
• Shear stress: t = F/A
• Shear strain: g = L/Lo = tan q
• Note that A and Lo are defined in the L
same way as for tension.
Lo
 Pressure
• Pressure P is created by having the same force acting
in all directions (x,y,z).
• E.g. hydrostatic pressure when you are underwater.
• P = F/A the same as for tension, but is conventionally
written as positive when it is compressive.
• The strain due to pressure is a change in volume,
called dilatation D = -(V-Vo)/Vo

• Any type of stress can be

expressed as a mixture of these
Three: tension, shear and pressure
 The stress/strain curve in more
detail…
• First Stage: Elastic Deformation
In this part of the
curve, the material
behaves like a
spring.
Stress s

If you remove the

X stress, the strain
goes back to zero.
Stress is (usually)
proportional to
strain.

Strain e
 Stiffness
• The material’s “stiffness” is the slope of
the stress/strain curve in the elastic region.
• Called Young’s modulus (or the elastic
modulus), symbol E.
• If the line is straight then E = stress/strain
at any point on the line.
 Yield Strength and Plastic
Deformation
• Above a certain stress, sy, the stress/strain line becomes
flatter and curved. This point is called the yield stress or
yield strength of the material.

sy
X
Stress s

O
Strain e
 Summary
• We’ve seen that the simple tensile test can tell you a lot
about how a material performs under load…
• …how much it deforms, both temporarily (elasticity) and
permanently (plasticity)…
• …and how much stress and strain are needed to break
it.
• In the next few lectures we’re going to look in more detail
at the stress/strain curve and define three mechanical
properties: stiffness, strength and toughness.
• We’ll see how to measure these properties and how to
use them in engineering situations.