Comparison of Specific Properties of Engineering Materials by Brad Peirson School of Engineering Grand Valley State University Laboratory Module 5 EGR 250 – Materials Science and Engineering Section 1 Instructor: Dr. P.N. Anyalebechi June 28, 20051Abstract The purpose of this laboratory experiment was to use basic measurements of several different samples of engineering materials and calculate their specific properties. To this end the radius, length and mass of fourteen different specimens were measured. The yield strength, tensile strength and elastic modulus was provided for each material. From this data as well the measured dimensions the specific yield strength, tensile strength and modulus were calculated. The results of these calculations show that in general the metal specimen have the highest density, the ceramic sample had a relatively mid-range density and the polymer materials had the lowest density. Introduction The density of a material can be a crucial factor in determining the material that is best suited for an application [1]. The density can be used to determine the relative weights of materials. This is an extremely important factor to consider if the material in question will be used to construct the frame of an aircraft. A lighter weight material will ultimately translate to greater payload capacity and decreased fuel consumption. A more important aspect of the density of the material is the role it plays in calculating its specific strength. The specific strength is simply the strength-to-weight ratio of the material [1]. The specific strength of a material is given by the tensile or yield strength divided by the density of the material. A material with a high specific strength will be suitable for applications such as aircraft and automobiles. This means that the material has a light weight with the aforementioned benefits, but it also has a high strength. Both of these factors are important in such safety conscious applications. The density, and thus the specific strength, of a material can be calculated a number of different ways. The simplest method is to determine the dimensions of a given material specimen and use an applicable formula to determine the volume of the specimen. The formula for the volume of a cylindrical specimen is given in equation 1,2 LDV42π= (1) where V=Volume of the specimen, D=Diameter of the cylinder and L=Length of the specimen. Once the volume of the specimen is known the mass can be measured with a balance. The density (ρ) is then the mass divided by the volume. The specific strength also requires a measure of the tensile and/or yield strength of the material. This can be done using a tensile test machine. In this method the sample would be stretched until it failed with a computer calculating the stresses at failure. A separate measurement can be performed to obtain this data but published tensile/yield strength values for most engineering materials is readily available. Such published values are shown in table 1. Table 1: Mechanical properties and relative costs of engineering material samples [1] Material Yield Strength (Map)* Tensile Strength (MPa)* Elastic Modulus (GPa) Relative Cost Titanium 170 240 103 66.4 AA6061 55 124 69.0 8.7 AA2024 75 185 72.4 14.1 Brass 113 333 110 6.0 C1018 295 395 207 1.0 Ductile Cast Iron 276 414 169 2.4 Pure Cu - Hot Rolled 69.0 220 115 7.9 Nylon 6,6 69.0 94.5 2.69 13.4 Polycarbonate 62.1 67.6 2.38 12.1 Polypropylene 34.1 36.2 1.35 1.8 ABS 45.0 2.40 12.0 PVC 42.8 46.2 3.30 3.0 PTFE - 27.6 0.50 33.3 High-alumina - 417 380 2.1 * For metals - annealed condition (O temper)3Experimental Procedure Fourteen specimens of different engineering materials were obtained from the instructor. The fourteen samples are listed in table 1. Each sample was cylindrical in shape. Using equation 1 the diameter and length of each sample was measured with a set of digital calipers and the volume was calculated. The only sample that was not measured with the calipers was the high-alumina due to its length. The mass of each sample was then obtained using a digital mass balance. Once the mass was obtained the density of each specimen was calculated by dividing the mass by the density. The results of these measurements and calculations are shown in table 2. After the density of each specimen was calculated the data in table 1 was incorporated to calculate the specific properties of each specimen. This data is shown in table 3. Finally equation 2 was used to determine the cost per unit yield strength and cost per unit tensile strength, i.e. wmCCostσρ= (2) where Cm=cost per unit mass, ρ=density of the material and σw=safe working stress of the material [2]. The safe working stress takes into account the factor of safety. In the case of this experiment there was no specified factor of safety so the yield strength and tensile strength were used directly for σw. The results of equation 3 are given in table 4. After the specific properties of each specimen were calculated they were ranked based on their specific tensile strength and their cost per unit tensile strength. This ranking is shown in table 5. Finally the measured densities from the 14 specimen were compared to published values. This comparison is illustrated in figure 4.4Results Table 2 shows the results of the measurements taken form the 14 specimen and the resulting calculated densities. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between the densities of the different materials. Figure 1 shows that the metals seem to have the highest density. High-alumina does appear to have a higher density than the 2 aluminum alloys, however. The polymers do appear to be the least dense material. Table 2: Physical measurement of 14 engineering samples Material Diameter (mm) Length (mm) Volume (mm3) Mass (g) Density (g/mm3) Titanium 12.76 15.79 2019.17 8.8 0.00436 AA6061 25.51 21.27 10871.2 28.6 0.00263 AA2024 25.43 20.8 10564.4 29.2 0.00276 Brass 25.44 12.61 6409.72 53.9 0.00841 C1018 19.02 19.37 5503.52 42.7 0.00776 Ductile Cast Iron 27.63 18.73 11230.3 78.0 0.00695 Pure Cu - Hot Rolled 25.43 18.36 9325.14 81.6 0.00875 Nylon 6,6 25.48 49.38 25179.1 28.5 0.00113 Polycarbonate 25.44 45.69 23224.4 27.6 0.00119 Polypropylene 26.84 48.93 27684.1 24.6 0.00089 ABS 25.25 37.85 18953 19.7