A preliminary materials selection guide comprising a series of bar charts and an associated work sheet has been developed. The guide is intended to aid design engineers in the selection of general types of materials and is seen to function as a forerunner leading to other, more specific, selection guides.
In addition to the conventional engineering properties represented in the bar charts, the following new cost and energy-consumption parameters were defined and represented in bar-chart format: Relative Price, Volumetric Price, Price/Rigidity Ratio, Energy-Consumption/Strength Ratio and Volumetric Energy-Consumption.
