Advanced Materials and Technologies

This course will systematically explore materials and their properties. The initial part of the course will briefly review basic classes of materials (metals, ceramics, polymers and their many derivative types) and their fundamental properties. Both traditional and newer high performance materials (e.g., carbon fiber materials and other composites) will be examined. A materials science perspective will be introduced that will enable to students to understand really why materials exhibit different properties and how these same properties can be controlled or manipulated. In the second part of the course, perspectives will be introduced on how to both select and design materials for different applications via the use of different kinds of mappings of properties of multidimensional materials, the use of different types of quantitative material characteristic indices, and other techniques. Example applications will be drawn from both the product design and architectural fields. The third part of the course addresses smart materials, which exhibit transient or changeable properties that allow a multiplicity of design states to be affected, rather than the singularly optimized states in traditional or high-performance materials. Included here are materials that change their properties in response to variations in different external stimuli (e.g., thermochromics) and materials that are energy-exchanging (e.g., piezoelectric materials that produce electricity when subjected to forces that cause shape changes and vice-versa). The role of these materials in \”intelligent\” environments will be briefly explored. Finally, the provocative world of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies will be introduced along with speculations on how developments in these areas promise to impact all design fields. The course will consist of both lectures and laboratory exercises. Please see the 6208 Courseware for an extended description and discussion of complimentary courses (6405, 6317).