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FUNCTION AND PERSONALITY, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS

FUNCTION AND PERSONALITY, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS. Materials in Product Development. Function and Personality. Materials give substance to everything we see and touch Homo sapiens differs from other species through the ability to design – to make things out of materials

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FUNCTION AND PERSONALITY, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS

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  1. FUNCTION AND PERSONALITY, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS Materials in Product Development Materials in Product Development

  2. Function and Personality • Materials give substance to everything we see and touch • Homo sapiens differs from other species through the ability to design – to make things out of materials • Designed objects, either symbolic or utilitarian, predate any recorded language Materials in Product Development

  3. Function and Personality (2) • Product designers seek to blend the technical with the aesthetic, practical utility with emotional delight • Emotional delight depends strongly on industrial design (ID) and materials selected • Market share is won or lost through a products visual and tactile appeal, the associations it carries and the emotions it generates Materials in Product Development

  4. Function and Personality (3) • Advances in materials enable advances in ID and in technical design • The ability to color and mold polymers to make bright, translucent shapes • The co-molding of elastomers to give soft, tactile surfaces • Toughened and textured glass to create transparent walls and flooring • Surface coatings to reflect, refract or diffuse light • Carbon fiber composites that allow exceptionally slender, delicate structures Materials in Product Development

  5. What influences Product Design? • Put in a simple way, market, technology, investment climate, environment and industrial design will have a strong influence Materials in Product Development

  6. Market • In a developed country, products are technically mature and markets are saturated • It is desire (want) not necessity (need) that drives the market • Product design is mostly driven by desire, normally towards greater functionality • This shifts emphasis from structural materials towards materials that behave in novel ways Materials in Product Development

  7. Science and Technology • The drive to miniaturization creates new mechanical and thermal problems • Materials for micron-scale devices function at a scale near (or beyond) the boundaries of the laws of mechanics • Materials to mimic nature need deeper understanding of cell biology • … Materials in Product Development

  8. Sustainability and the environment • At a global growth rate of 3% per year, we will mine, process and dispose of more in the next 25 years than in the entire history of human civilization… • Concern for sustainability must go from a current time-scale of 10 years to a a target of 50 years, not to compromise the needs of future generations Materials in Product Development

  9. Economics and investment climate • Some industries are slow to adopt new technologies, others are not • Developing, certifying and commercializing a new structural material takes about 15 years • For functional materials, the time-scale is shorter and their potential value is higher (and so is the risk associated) Materials in Product Development

  10. Aesthetics and Industrial Design • One view – a product designed to function properly automatically has aesthetic appeal • Another view – products built around function alone have not been designed, but merely engineered • Yet another – form follows failure… Materials in Product Development

  11. Aesthetics and Industrial Design (2) • Product differentiation • Simple interfaces • Corporate and brand identity • Product life Materials in Product Development

  12. Material Evolution • The Camera Materials in Product Development

  13. Material Evolution (2) • The Hairdryer Materials in Product Development

  14. Material Evolution (3) 7 • The Vacuum Cleaner 5 6 1 2 8 3 4 Materials in Product Development

  15. The stuff...multi-dimensional Materials • The Engineering dimension: technical attributes • The Use dimension: ergonomics and the product interface • The Environmental dimension: “green” design • The Aesthetic dimension: the senses • The Personal dimension Materials in Product Development

  16. The Engineering dimension: technical attributes • Before a material is available to th market, it goes through a number of steps • Must comply with legislation, p.e. • Most material properties derive directly from the atomic and electronic structure of the material Materials in Product Development

  17. The Engineering dimension: technical attributes (2) • Materials are cassified based on their physics • At the first level, on the nature of the atoms and their bonding • At hte second level, on its variants • At subsequent levels, on the details of its composition Materials in Product Development

  18. The Engineering dimension: technical attributes (3) • Open a book, or search the web for a particular material: you will get technical data • Largely numerical • Probably backed up by some text on corrosion, or wear, or ... • Try www.matweb.com Materials in Product Development

  19. The Engineering dimensionMapping and usingtechnical attributes • If you are looking for similar materials in a few attributes, the easiest way to compare them is to visualize differences between them • Once you picked a small number of materials, more precise data is available from manfacturers Materials in Product Development

  20. These are, respectively, the measurement of the size and shape of the human body, and, the analysis of the movement, forces, pwer and stamina of which the body is capable Materials have a role to play: Objects can be made lighter by the use of light metal alloys, polymers and foam cored sandwich-structures Elastomers can provide grip where it is needed Polymer gels and foams allow soft tactile surfaces Differences in size can be accomodated by using velcros, demountable adhesives, elastomers,... The Use dimensionAnthropomorphics and bio-mechanics Materials in Product Development

  21. The Use dimensionNoise management • The human ear responds in the range of 20 to 20000 Hz • The piano ranges from bottom note (28Hz) to top note (4186Hz) • Sound pressure is measured in Pascals, but is represented in a logarithmic scale in decibels (dB) Materials in Product Development

  22. Materials in Product Development

  23. The Use dimensionNoise management (3) • In product design it is usually necessary to absorb sound • Soft porous materials absorb sound waves, converting them to heat • Porous or highly flesible materials suach as low density polymers and ceramic foams, plaster, and fiberglass absorb well • A material with a coefficient of sound absortion of 0.8 absorbs 80% of the sound that hits it Materials in Product Development

  24. The Use dimensionThermal management • All products that consume power will generate heat • This creates two classes of problems: • To insulate parts that are sensitive to heat • To transmit, or spread heat • Polymers are good insulators • Still air, CO2 and CFC’s are even better... Materials in Product Development

  25. The Use dimensionThermal management (2) • To insulate with low (<150ºC) temperatures, polymer foams are good • To insulate with higher temperatures, glass wool or glass foam, mineral fibers or ceramic foams are more appropriate • When aiming for conduction, the best are solid silver, gold or diamond • Occasionally, materials that conduct heat but not electricity are required: take aluminum nitride (AlN) or beryllia (BeO) Materials in Product Development

  26. The Use dimensionLight management • Few products generate light intensity • Many reflect light • Reflectivity is measured as a percentage of light that is reflected by a surface: it depends on the material, its color and its texture Materials in Product Development

  27. Will we really run out of materials? We won’t! The price will rise so drasticaly that we will have to look at other ways of doing the same! More important to the near future is the impact of energy consumption and of manufacturing 25 years ago a car did 14litres/100km Today a car does 5litres/100km (3x less) Car ownership and average distance driven per year have both increased by a factor of 6 ! The Environmental dimensionMaterials as resources Materials in Product Development

  28. The Environmental dimensionBalancing material and energy consumption • Most obvious ways to conserve materials are • Make products smaller • Make them last longer • Recycle them in the end • On the other hand, new technology offers more energy efficiency, so making products last longer is counter-producive... We throw them away when there is still “life” in them, because new ones are more appealing • Still, if a product has an appealling design, it becomes difficult to dispose of... Materials in Product Development

  29. The Environmental dimensionBalancing material and energy consumption Materials in Product Development

  30. The Environmental dimensionEco-design • Materials and energy consumption are interlinked in a complex way • Easier way: product life-cycle with four stages of energy consumption • Production of the materials • Manufacture of product • Use of product • Disposal of product Materials in Product Development

  31. The Aesthetic dimensionTouch: the tactile attributes • Everyone agrees that metals feel “cold” and “hard”, cork feels “warm”... • A material feels “cold” if it conducts heat away from our hands – relates to thermal conductivity (can have significance in color terms too) • Hard materials do not scratch easily – relates directly to the material property “hardness” • A “soft” material deflects when handled – elastic (or viscoelastic) behavior, relates to “modulus” Materials in Product Development

  32. Materials in Product Development

  33. The Aesthetic dimensionSight: the visual attributes • Visual attributes are divided in transparency and reflectivity • Metals are opaque • Most ceramics, because they are poly-cristalline and the crystals scatter light, are either opaque or translucent • Glasses and single crystals of some ceramics are transparent • Polymers have the greatest diversity • Transparency is commonly described in 4 levels Materials in Product Development

  34. Materials in Product Development

  35. The Aesthetic dimensionHearing: the acoustic attributes • The frequency of sound (pitch) emitted when an object is truck relates to modulus and density • Another aspect of acoustics is damping • Bronze, glass and steel “ring” when struck – they have low damping and high pitch • Rubber, foams and most polymers sound dull – they have low pitch and high damping Materials in Product Development

  36. Materials in Product Development

  37. Conclusions:Expression through materials • (Some) Design thinking holds that materials must be used “honestly” • Consumers also value humor, sympathy, surprise, provocation, even shock... • A characterizing feature of polymers is their ability to mimic other materials – we’re being honest! Materials in Product Development

  38. That’s all folks ! Materials in Product Development

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