8/5/2019 What's the classification of materials?

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What's the classification of materials? What is the classification of engineering

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Why do we classify materials?
2 Answers
Why is classification of transparent materials
difficult?
Wazabi Zeroun, PhD student - Spec. in CIGS Thin-Film Solar Cells
Answered Jan 16 2017 · Author has 57 answers and 134.6k answer views

If you allow, i’ll reuse some schematics and parts of another question on the subject:
Wazabi Zeroun's answer to Are ceramics polymers?.

Materials can be clasiffied into 4 major categories as done on this very nice tree
diagram:

The classification happens mostly due to the different types of bonding between the
atoms of said material. The differences in bondings between atoms will be
responsible for a lot of the properties of the material.

The possible types of bondings are represented by the Van Arkel-Ketelaar triangle:

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This triangle means that an interatomic bond can be either covalent, metallic, or a
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mixture of two of them.

Metals are materials that are hard but ductile (they bend until a certain point). As the
name indicates, their atoms are mostly linked to one another through metallic
bonds.

Ceramics are materials that are very hard and brittle, meaning that they don’t bend
(like metals), but break easily under the effect of forces. Atoms in a ceramic material
are situated on a nice 3D grid and are held together in all direction (in which there is a
neighbor atom) by ionic and/or covalent bondings. Both of which are extremelly
strong bonds, that are difficult to break, i.e. it requires a lot of energy to do so, and
don’t “bend well”.

For polymers it is more variable but they are mostly (very) flexible and soft, meaning
that they bend very well but are often subject to tearing. They are mostly made up of
long chain of monomers. The interraction between monomers are mostly covalent,
but the chains themselves are held together by weak hydrogen and/or Van der Walls
bonds. This means that allthough the chains themselves are really strongly attached,
they can be “easily” detached from one another, explaining the before mentionned
properties.

On to the last category. The composites. As the name suggests, these are
compositions of 2 or more of the previous three families. At this point it doesn’t help
much to talk about bondings and characteristics because each composite is fairly
unique in the way it will behave and honestly.. The only limit is your imagination
(and the number of available material).

I hope this helps, thanks for the A2A

References:

Material family tree : DoITPoMS - TLP Library Examination of a Manufactured Article

- Classes of Materials

Van Arkel-Ketelaar triangle: Van Arkel–Ketelaar triangle - Wikipedia

1.8k views · View 7 Upvoters · Answer requested by Amosu James

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Related Questions More Answers Below

What is the classification of engineering materials?

What property classifications are there for materials?

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Why do we classify materials?

Daniel Polák, Rocket Engineer at Manned Spacecraft

Answered Jan 18, 2017 · Author has 158 answers and 1m answer views

Hello Most materials fall into one of three classes that are based on the atomic
bonding forces of a particular material. These three classifications are metallic,
ceramic and polymeric. Additionally, different materials can be combined to create a
composite material. Within each of these classifications, materials are often further
organized into groups based on their chemical composition or certain physical or
mechanical properties. Composite materials are often grouped by the types of
materials combined or the way the materials are arranged together. Below is a list of
some of the commonly classification of materials within these four general groups of
materials.

Metals

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Ferrous metals and alloys (irons, carbon steels, alloy steels, stainless steels,
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tool and die steels)

Nonferrous metals and alloys (aluminum, copper, magnesium, nickel,

titanium, precious metals, refractory metals, superalloys)

Ceramic

Glasses

Glass ceramics

Graphite

Diamond

Polymeric

Thermoplastics plastics

Thermoset plastics

Elastomers

Composites

Reinforced plastics

Metal-matrix composites

Ceramic-matrix composites

Sandwich structures

Concrete

1.4k views · View 1 Upvoter · Answer requested by Amosu James

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