Material Selection Project Nash Anderson, Sean Dawson, Blake Reller Team: Free 99 4/22/10 Summary Our goal

in this project was to successfully complete a thoroughly analyzed materials selection process for three different applications: lightweight aircraft substructure, floor joists in a low-cost housing development, and environmentally floor joists for a modern office building. We accomplished this goal through the application of Ashbys selection method using CES and multiple Weighted Performance Indices (WPI) utilizing Saatys pair-wise comparison rating system. The results of our analyses are the selection of a Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber composite for use as the aircraft substructure, Fir for use in the office building, and Super Sulfate Cement for use in the low-cost housing development.

Aircraft Cabin The military is asking for a lightweight substructure for their new F-22 Raptor aircraft cabin. The cabin needs to be lightweight for the sake of flying efficiency, and needs to be able to support a load in bending without excessive deflection. The objective for this particular application is to minimize mass of the substructure. The constraint is that the supporting beams in the cabin will not deflect too much and thus be relatively stiff. An additional consideration for this process would be the mechanical loss coefficient of a material, as aircraft are likely to experience a lot of vibration in flight.

100

Cyanate ester/HM carbon fiber, UD composite, 0 lamina

10

Young's modulus (10^6 psi)

0.1

0.01

0.001

1e-4

1e-5

1e-6 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

Figure 1: CES Performance index graph for aircraft substructure. Selection line of 2 (as required by performance index) is visible.

Density (lb/in^3)

The performance index that was used in order to narrow the amount of choices down to 10 materials, was Youngs Modulus over density, or E1/2/. A graph generated in CES using this performance index is illustrated in figure 1. The top ten materials that possess a decent Youngs Modulus, along with a low density were balsa wood, Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber, Diamond, Aerated concrete, Beryllium, Fir, Boron Carbide, Spruce, Palm, and Redwood.

Because this is an aircraft cabin that may be exposed to explosives, two limits, or screening criteria, were place on the performance indices. These limits called for the materials to be nonflammable and non-toxic. Once these limits were finalized, the top five remaining materials were Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber, three types of Boron Carbide, Glass Foam, Al-60%C-M40 (HM-C-Fiber), and Mg-70% B(f). Since there were three different types of Boron Carbide, as stated above, a separate WPI was set up to compare them and ultimately decide which one would be the best fit to compare against the other four materials listed above. In order to determine the Boron Carbide that would perform the best inside the aircraft cabin, the Saatys method was applied. The criterion that were chosen in order to weigh the various options were the mechanical loss coefficient, salt water durability, fatigue strength, and the performance index which includes density and Youngs Modulus with non-flammable and non-toxic screening factors. The mechanical loss coefficient was chosen because it is the measure to which a material dissipates vibrational energy, converting it to heat. Being that the aircraft cabin will be undergoing many vibrational conditions while in the air, the mechanical loss coefficient was a factor that had to be addressed. The salt-water durability was chosen because these aircraft will spend a lot of time over the ocean and on air-craft carriers, and resistance to the effects of salt water is necessary. In CES, saltwater durability is rated on a qualitative scale, the levels being unacceptable, limited, acceptable, and excellent. We assigned to these levels an integer from 1-4, unacceptable being 1,and excellent being 4. This is the rating system implemented in our WPI analyses. Fatigue strength was chosen because there will be cyclic loads applied to them, and thus fatigue may potentially occur. Density and the Youngs Modulus were incorporated into the equation because they were in the need statement and being that the beams are going to be in an aircraft cabin, they need to be light weight for flying efficiency and stiff enough to support the loads without

deflecting. However, if the plane were to burn, the goal is that no toxic chemicals will be released into the air. The performance index was the most important category to focus on (weight of .53) for the making of the aircraft cabin support beams. The next highest weighting factor was fatigue strength (.22), followed by the mechanical loss coefficient (.19), and then salt-water durability (.06). The result of this WPI is that the type of Boron Carbide designated by CES as HIP is the best of the three, receiving a score of 98. The second and third place Boron Carbides received scores of 89 and 82 respectively. Now that the proper Boron Carbide has been selected, the Boron Carbide (HIP) can be compared to the other four materials that were named earlier: Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber, Glass Foam, Al-60%C-M40 (HM-C-Fiber), and Mg-70% B(f). Using the same comparisons and weighting factors from the Boron Carbide WPI, another WPI can be formed to help decide which material will best meet the militarys needs. The results of this WPI suggest that the optimal material to use for this aircraft substructure is the Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber composite. This is because it has a great performance index rating, which accounts for 53% of the decision, a great fatigue strength rating, which accounts for 22% of the decision, a great salt water durability rating, which accounts for only 6% of the decision, and a moderate mechanical loss coefficient which accounts for 19% of the decision. As part of our sensitivity analysis, the performance index, which was rated most important in the average weighting factors, was reduced in importance or simply taken out of the equation, and the Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber was still the leading material because of its all around exceptional property values in the areas selected for our analysis. Our conclusion based on several selection processes is that the Cyanate Ester Carbon Fiber composite is the best material to use as a lightweight substructure for the military aircraft.

Housing Selection The need of our user is to provide floor joists for a low cost housing development. The customers are people in Haiti that are in need of new shelters, since theirs was destroyed in the recent earthquake. The floor joists we have selected will need to serve the function of supporting a load in bending. The objective is to minimize cost to make it as cheap as possible. The constraints are to have it not deflect too much, and some additional considerations are to minimize the flammability of the material because it will be housing to many people so we want to keep it as safe as possible.

Figure 2: CES Performance index graph for low-cost housing development. Selection line of 2 (as required by performance index) is visible.

For our materials selection we used a performance index of (E1/2)/Cm. A graph generated in CES using this performance index is illustrated in figure 2. We also filtered our materials to only display those that are non-flammable because risk of fire is fairly high in large housing developments. The top materials from this graph are: Aerated concrete, Asphalt concrete, 5 other kinds of concrete, and High volume fly ash concrete.

Because the P.I. only included Youngs modulus, density, and price it came up with mainly different forms of concretes. The next group of materials that were close was a bunch of different types of wood, but they were filtered out because of being so flammable. A WPI material selection was performed for the five types of concrete and from these five, the top material was taken and put in another WPI material selection with the remaining three materials to try to get a wider range of properties to compare. The four materials were compared by the P.I., fracture toughness, and fatigue strength with weighting factors (.49, .20, .31 respectively). We felt that the P.I. was by far the most important factor because that is the function that was defined for our material to serve. We then felt that fracture toughness was less critical than fatigue strength. We agreed that there would be a more likely chance of the floor joists wearing out over time, than being exposed to a great enough load to cause them to fracture so we weighted fatigue strength higher accordingly. When comparing these four materials for our final selection: Aerated Concrete, Asphalt Concrete, High Volume Fly Ash Concrete, and Super Sulfate Cement we came up with the material best suited for low cost housing floor joists being Super Sulfate Cement. Our results did come out robust and were very spread out. Super Sulfate Cement was clearly the best choice when the results were reviewed, because it had a good P.I. value that was right with the top material and had the best fracture toughness fatigue strength rating. The actual WPI outcome ratings for the materials were Super Sulfate Cement (73), High Volume Fly Ash Concrete (67), Aerated Concrete (53), and Asphalt Concrete (34). High Volume Fly Ash Concrete was the only material that came close to Super Sulfate Cement and that is because it had the same fracture toughness rating and a P.I. and fatigue strength values just a little behind those of Super Sulfate Cement. When the weighting factors are changed as part of a sensitivity analysis, Super Sulfate Cement still remains the top material with many different weighting combinations. Only until the P.I. weighting

factor is raised as high 65% of the decision does Super Sulfate Cement fall second to Aerated Concrete due to its extremely low density. With this analysis we can conclude that Super Sulfate Cement is indeed the best choice of material for the floor joists of the low-cost housing development in Haiti. A recommendation we have for the use of this material is to reinforce it with iron re-bar, thus greatly increasing the toughness and earthquake resistance of the structure. Re-bar is also very low in cost and so will provide a costeffective reinforcement to this already cost-effective material. Office Selection Burleson Consulting, Inc. is an environmental consulting firm that provides various land use and resource management assessments and recommendations to companies in the public and private sectors. Burleson Consulting, Inc. has hired our team to select an environmentally friendly material suitable for use as floor joists in their new office building. Their submitted needs statement reads: Floor joists need to support loads in bending, and must do this without deflecting too much. From this statement, we gather that the function to be filled is to support a load in bending, the objective is to minimize environmental impact (eco-indicator value) and design constraints are that the beam cannot deflect too much (stiffness i.e. youngs modulus) and that the geometry of the beam is fixed (with cross-sectional area free). Additional considerations for this selection process are cost, fatigue strength, and fracture toughness. The first step in our selection process was to create a performance index graph in CES. This was accomplished by first finding the correct performance index for our application, in this case, a stiffness limited beam (section area free) to be loaded in bending, minimizing environmental impact. The performance index that follows from this application is E 1/2/Ie, and the resulting graph (with selection line) can be seen in figure 3 below.

Figure 3: CES Performance index graph for office building. Selection line of 2 (as required by performance index) is visible.

The top ten results based on this graph are four types of balsa wood, aerated concrete, fir, willow, two types of spruce, and redwood. We did not feel the need to use any limiting factors on the results of this graph since none of these materials is toxic, and there is less danger of a fire being started in an office building than in a large housing complex. We did, however, include the additional factors of cost, fatigue strength and fracture toughness in our WPI analyses. Cost was included because, as a business, Burleson Consulting, Inc. is concerned about the financial feasibility of their project. Fatigue strength was included because the floor joists will be exposed to cyclic loading for many years, and fracture toughness was included because the joists will not perform very well if they are stiff, but cannot support the applied load without fracturing. Keeping these things in mind, we ran a preliminary WPI to choose the best type of balsa wood to compare to other materials. We did this because if we had included the four types of balsa with only one or two other materials, the results would not be very robust because of the similarity in properties of all the balsa. By isolating the balsa wood in its own WPI, we can obtain a more robust choice of the correct balsa, and if a type of balsa is indeed the best choice for the job, it should make it through both the preliminary WPI, and the final WPI comparing it to other materials.

As a result of the preliminary WPI, the balsa wood designated in CES as balsa Id came out ahead of the others with a score of 83, followed by the others having scores of 73, 72, and 67. This balsa wood was then put in a WPI with Aerated concrete, fir, willow, and spruce. With the performance index, cost, fatigue strength and fracture toughness given weighted values of .42, .12, .23, and .23 respectively, fir scored the highest of the materials compared with a score of 76, followed closely by spruce, having a score of 75. The results of this analysis show that fir would be the best material of choice for Burleson Consulting, Inc to use as floor joists in their new office building with spruce as a close second. The performance index was given the most weight (.42) in our selection because it is the factor that deals with our original design objectives and constraints. Fatigue strength and fracture toughness were given the same level of importance (.23 each) because they both have a significant bearing in the selection of structural member. Cost was deemed the least important factor with a weight of .12 because the company is in the process of expanding their operation based on a good amount of success to date with the expectation of more in the future. They are also willing to sacrifice the cheapest option, if need be, to ensure that the materials they use will satisfy all requirements as well as stay consistent with the companys image and mission as stewards of the environment. In a sensitivity analysis of our WPI results, the weighting factors were changed and factors were added and removed, but our results stayed consistent through all of our combinations. Embodied energy was added at one point, but did not affect the outcome of the results, and upon further consideration, was removed as a factor because it is essentially the same as the eco-indicator value which is accounted for in the Performance Index. In all of these trials, fir and spruce emerged as the first and second choices, and always very close together. This is because they both have very similar properties in most categories, but fir has a higher Performance Index value which, as the most important factor of our decision, pushed it to the top.

Our conclusion based on a thorough analysis of candidate materials is that the wood of Fir trees is the best material for Burleson Consulting, Inc. to use as floor joists in their new office building. One recommendation we have for Burleson Consulting, Inc. is that they also find a type of fireproofing insulation or treatment to reduce the flammability of their floor joists. While we did not find the possibility of a fire great enough to eliminate flammable materials for this particular application, it is a good thing to keep in mind when building.