Description
We routinely witness the introduction of miraculous new materials with amazing properties. When newly discovered, they are rare, expensive, and temperamental in their performance. Gradually, they evolve, improve, and become essential in demanding applications. These curiosities morph into multiple permutations that capture the imagination of cutting-edge designers. Still later, their price drops to commodity levels and these marvels become mundane, but they are vital to the global economy and our way of life.
Etched silicon circuitry and high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable facilitate the ongoing tech boom. The plastics and composites of the previous generation still drive our consumer culture. Steel alloys revolutionized mass production and enabled the proliferation of trains, ships, and cars. Vulcanized rubber was the wonder material of the mid-nineteenth century. The discoveries of mud brick for shelters, bronze smelting for tools, and fired clay for storage vessels lifted our ancestors into the first civilizations.
None of these advances sprang from a single inventive revelation. Each one required a production process to be developed and continuously improved. Skillful process manipulation is the key to commercializing materials with magical properties and commercial superiority. The processing techniques are always veiled in secrecy. Rivals have coveted the secrets of improved materials ever since we first transformed a lump of flint into a lethal hunting blade.
This book explores the strategies for the systematic development, improvement, and ongoing production of engineered materials. The important properties of these materials are generally dependent on the conditions that they experience during manufacturing. These products remember the forces of their own creation and they acquire distinctive characteristics from their process history.
This retained memory dictates how consistently your materials will perform in the real world. It explains why the defective machine part breaks at the moment of greatest need. This is the reason why one particular product grade works better than any other grade in the application for which it was tailored. Successful innovators understand how to adjust their processes to optimize end-user performance.
Nineteenth-century cannon shells were often hollow iron balls packed with gunpowder. When the gun was fired, a fuse in the shell was ignited. After it burned down to the gunpowder charge, the ball would usually explode, showering the vicinity with metal shards. Fuses were the engineered materials of their day.
During the American Civil War, the Confederate forces relied on colorcoded paper fuses. The yellow fuse was rated to burn at 5 s/in. and the green fuse at 7 s/in. In theory, the gunners would cut the fuses to the appropriate length, based on the estimated range to their target and the mussel velocity of their particular guns. In practice, the procedures were governed by tables and rules of thumb derived from the experience of each gun crew with the materials available to them.
The nearby Richmond Armory supplied the artillerymen of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. However, in March 1863, this facility suffered a devastating explosion and fire, curtailing its production. For the subsequent invasion of Pennsylvania, fuses were hurriedly sourced from factories across the South. Due to wartime shortages, the gun crews had no opportunity to become familiar with their new supplies.