Selecting metal materials - Selection process

Ua selection of materials is as old as humanity itself: for a long time, it was a "resourceful" practice for making objects, called "teknè" by the Greeks and "ars" by the Latins, and for which it was uncommon to write down recipes and rules (see also [76][77][78] ).

Today, this approach is a young discipline, at the intersection of materials science, engineering sciences (manufacturing processes, design methods and cost estimation), and applied computer science (information management, man/machine interfaces, numerical optimization techniques) [93] .

However, the sheer number of materials (several tens of thousands) and related data, the sheer number of application processes (several thousand), the dispersion and quality of information, and the difficulties of finding the most effective design compromises (in terms of quality, cost and lead times), depending on the designer's environment, all suggest a certain modesty when it comes to the "scientific" nature of a selection process. The role of the operator remains essential, especially in a small organization.

That's why the purpose of this article is not to provide "the" right method, but to set out some benchmarks by talking about "classic" practice and highlighting its difficulties, and then to present some decision-aid tools, still fairly recent and stemming from work initiated and developed at Cambridge University (Great Britain), and extended to France, with Cetim's support. At the same time, computer-aided design and its optimization are the focus of a great deal of activity, notably in France at the "primécanicienne school", whose international extension is underway ( [4][80] ).