Overview

With the new research going on it is sometimes required to have materials with totally
opposite properties such as hard and ductile or hard and tough at a same time. Thus use of
pure metals is obsolete.
To solve this problem initially idea of alloys and later the composite materials was put
forward. These are homogeneous materials. But in the conventional alloying process there is
a limitation to the amount of solute dissolved in solvent or the base because of the
thermodynamic equilibrium limit. Another limitation can be caused when two dissimilar
materials having melting temperatures very high difference are mixed together. Similarly if
Powdered Metallurgy (PM) technology is used it is difficult to achieve complex shapes as
well as due to powdered ingredients the product may have porous structure and poor strength.
On the other hand the composite materials are made up of combining the contents in solid
form having different physical and chemical properties. The properties of new material differ
from the original and also they are lighter in weight. But they can also face issues of
delamination (fibres separating from the main matrix) under extreme circumstances due to
poor choice of materials having different coefficient of expansion.
Thus the new concept of Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) was invented which can be
applied to metals, ceramics, and organic composites to generate improved components with
superior physical properties.
The property gradient in the material is caused by a position-dependent chemical
composition, microstructure or atomic order. [Processing techniques for functionally graded
materials B. Kieback, A. Neubrand, H. Riedel , Materials Science and Engineering A362
(2003) 81105]
Thus the new concept of FGM was invented first in Japan in 1984 during a space plane
project to increase adhesion and to reduce the thermal stresses occurring while the surface
temperature was 2000 K and a temperature gradient of 1000 K was across a cross section <10
mm. [Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) and Their Production Methods, Dr, Andrew
Ruys and D. Sun, http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1592]
These materials are heterogeneous in one direction, consisting of two or more different
materials, engineered to have continuously varying spatial composition profile.[ Procedia
Materials Science 5 ( 2014 ) 1291 1299, Functionally graded composite material,
Gururaja Udupa, S. Shrikantha Rao, K. V. Gangadharan]
These may be characterized by the variation in composition and structure gradually over
volume, resulting in corresponding changes in the properties of the material.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionally_graded_material]
It can be characterised by a compositional gradient from one component to the other.
[Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) and Their Production Methods, Dr, Andrew Ruys and
D. Sun, http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1592]

Also these materials dont have sharp interface changes such as in composite materials which
can cause the failure initialisation.