Motivation
Proper selection of the material suitable for a specific application is one of the most important and complex issues that needs to be addressed ever earlier during product development. For modelling and simulation of the response of loaded structures and components, among other information, more or less intricate properties which describe material behaviour must be known. Except for the case of determining values of basic monotonic properties, experimental characterisation of material behaviour is complicated, expensive and, in the case of cyclic i.e. fatigue experiments, it can be long-lasting as well. If experimental testing of all candidate materials cannot be performed, which is usually the case, alternative solutions, such as literature research and estimation methods are often resorted to.
In light of this, it is suggested that the quality and accuracy of material selection can be improved by:
- increasing availability, searchability and comparability of existing knowledge on materials,
- developing better estimation methods and improving the accuracy and reliability of existing ones,
- expanding the knowledge on proper application of estimation methods of material behaviour.
The Idea and Goals
The main idea behind MATDAT.com is at least partial fulfillment of above mentioned measures and making results of the project easily and widely available to the members of technical community (experts from the industry, engineers, designers, scientists, professors and students).
Our primary goals are:
development of a dedicated webpage featuring general information about the project,
an interactive, user-expandable knowledge base and material properties database containing published, design-oriented properties of design-relevant (at first) metallic materials,
a knowledge-based expert system for selection of a suitable estimation method and performing the estimation of advanced (cyclic, fatigue) material parameters from monotonic properties (such as the ultimate strength R m or Brinell hardness HB ),
forming and supporting a user community willing to cooperate and share existing, published material data, either own, or available from existing literature sources.
Additional benefits (expected)
- increased level of utilization of experimental equipment, as well as of experts’ work and knowledge,
- easier and faster evaluation of more candidate materials during product development,
- savings due to the avoidance of repeating experiments and tests already performed elsewhere with the same or similar materials,
- increasing possibilities of verification of own experimental results,
- facilitation of investigations and research requiring data on large number of materials,
- dissemination of knowledge on advanced material models and an increase of their acceptance by practicing engineers and experts from the industry.