Electronic Databases for Materials Selection

Abstract

The increasing market competition necessitates the creation of products of better quality with the lowest possible price. One way to achieve this is an appropriate materials selection that will enable better and cheaper product. Knowing the quality of the available materials and their characteristics, as well as tracking trends in the development of new materials, are essential parts of good engineering practice. The materials selection is not an easy task in engineering practice and it is one of the few in the process of constructing a product that is subjected to constant changes. On the other hand, the wrong materials selection in the very beginning of constructing could have irretrievable damage to the manufacturing and exploitation process. Data and information about materials must always be available to constructors and designers of new products, as well as to technologists. They can be found in classic literature (manuals, catalogs, standards, recommendations,...) or in electronically prepared databases on the computer (intranet, internet). Part of the available software tools for the selection of materials with the basic characteristics will be presented in this paper. Also, several tools will be described in more detail.