Teaching Materials And Process Selection To Mechanical Engineering Students

Mechanical engineers are often faced with the problem of selecting the best possible material and the best manufacturing process for making a designed product using the material. One good approach to achieve this purpose would be to examine alternative materials available for making the product and choosing the best material based on the product service requirements. Once this is done, the alternate processes available for making the product using this material may then be considered and the best process chosen based on the technological and economic feasibilities of the process. Unfortunately this exercise is seldom simple on account of the enormous progress in the development of materials and processes in recent times [1]. Fortunately, the monumental work done by Ashby and his associates [2] has paved the way for not only making these tasks simpler, but provide unambiguous guidelines for completing these tasks. A course with examples highlighting these aspects would be of great benefit to mechanical engineering students in learning how to apply the knowledge in their profession. This paper was written as a preamble for this goal.