The aim of this module is to prepare the student for a career in a wide range of manufacturing and mechanical industries. It aims to provide the student with an appreciation of the various failure mechanisms, how to recognise them, how to determine the life span, how to reduce or prevent them, and an overview of manufacturing processes determined by different materials. The first part concentrates on various properties (long term) and failure mechanisms. The second part concentrates on various processes determined by different materials and how the material properties are affected. The importance of the structure-processing-property-environmental relationship is developed further and supported in the laboratory sessions.
Part A: Properties, failure and prevention:
Fracture
- Ductile and Brittle Fracture
- Griffith’s crack theory
- Factors that affect fracture
- Structural mechanisms
- Fracture toughness and critical stress intensity approaches
- Methods to improve resistance to fracture
- Identification of fracture mechanisms
Fatigue
- Testing
- Structural Mechanisms
- Factors that affect fatigue fracture
- Estimate life of component e.g. Miner’s Rule.
- Structural identification of the failure mechanism
- Approaches to improve fatigue resistance
Creep
- Testing
- Structural mechanisms
- Factors that affect creep
- Estimate life e.g. Arrhenius equation
- Structural identification of the failure mechanism
- Processing & creep resistant materials
- Approaches to improve the creep resistance
Corrosion
- Testing
- Structural and chemical mechanisms
- Factors that affect corrosion
- Structural identification of the failure mechanism
- Corrosion-resistant materials
- Approaches to improve corrosion resistance
Wear
- Testing Structural Mechanisms
- Factors that affect wear
- Structural identification of the failure mechanism
- Wear-resistant materials
- Approaches to improve wear resistance
Part B: Processing:
Heat Treatment
- The relevance of heat treatment for all engineering materials (metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, single crystals),
- Structure: atomic, nano, micro-and macrostructures,
- Mechanisms,
- Equilibrium, Iso-thermal and non-isothermal phase diagrams,
- Heat treatment of plain carbon steels, alloy steels, the effect on structure (phases present) and processes on the mechanical properties,
- Failure and prevention mechanisms,
Powder Metallurgy
- Manufacture of brittle materials
- Ceramics and Glasses
- Structure (nano-, and micro- ), types, properties, applications and manufacture
Materials and process selection
Laboratory Sessions (Metals, Polymers & Composites):
- Microstructure Analysis
- Corrosion
- Heat Treatment
- Jominy-End Quench Test
- Research/ Case Study
- Powder Metallurgy
- Creep
