Ashby Plots
An Ashby plot, named for Michael Ashby of Cambridge University, is a scatter plot which displays two or more properties of many materials or classes of materials. An Ashby plot useful for the example of the stiff, light part discussed above would have Young's modulus on one axis and density on the other axis, with one data point on the graph for each candidate material. On such a plot, it is easy to find not only the material with the highest stiffness, or that with the lowest density, but that with the best ratio . Using a log scale on both axes facilitates selection of the material with the best plate stiffness .
The first Ashby plot on the right shows density and Young's modulus, without a log scale. Metals are represented by blue squares, ceramics by green, and polymers by red. It was generated by the Material Grapher.
The second plot shows the same materials attributes for a database of approx 100 materials. Materials families (polymers, foams, metals, etc.) are identified by the larger colored bubbles. The image is created using Prof Mike Ashby's own CES Selector software and data from Granta Design.
Read more about this topic: Material Selection
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