IMPROVING THE MATERIAL SELECTION PROCESS IN PRODUCT DESIGN ACTIVITY: AN OVERVIEW OF MATERIAL REPOSITORIES

Information about innovations in material science and material selection [1] is central in the product design discipline, not only for their immediate consequence on functional aspects of products parts but also for several different reasons. Over the years, an increasing number of material properties and characteristics have been considered for pursuing an accurate materials selection to govern and manage all information related to materials at several levels, from technical, sensorial, intangible, and ethical aspects. In previous works [8], a critical analysis of existing digital tools has already been conducted, providing an analysis of the advantages and peculiarity of the different sources. In this paper, the authors analyzed a selection of existing online materials repositories. Still, they tried to implement this analysis with more information to build and provide a tool for students and professionals. A table has been built to catalog and collect information of the diverse sources through systematic study and classification of the different material repositories found in literature and on the web. This activity has been carried on to provide, at a glance, an overview of the different repositories and ease information gathering activity for material selection in various contexts, depending on the project development level and the referring user of each library. Finally, the table obtained by the desk analysis has been embedded in two different activities: one involving professionals and the other involving students to test the efficiency of the tool built. The activities outputs and results of the table application will be presented and discussed.