In order for mechanical engineers to make informed choices with respect to material selection they need a solid understanding of the relationships between material structures, properties, and processing. To accomplish this objective, an undergraduate Engineering Materials course has been restructured and student-conducted laboratory experiments have been added. The unique approach taken in the laboratory is first to select representative materials from each of the three basic classes of materials (metals, ceramics, and polymers), and then concurrently characterize these materials with a series of experiments which include microstructure morphology determination, microconstituent properties, bulk mechanical properties, and the effects of processing on structure and properties. By following the same set of materials through the same sequence of experiments, the students will more easily grasp the concepts of structure-property interrelationships. The result will be graduates who are more capable of making intelligent materials selection decisions for design applications. The project provides devices for examining and characterizing the materials on a microstructural scale, a uniaxial test machine, equipment for studying time-dependent deformation, and state-of-the-art data acquisition systems.
