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Viewpoint Paper
Abstract—Architectured or “hybrid” materials are combinations of two or more materials or of materials and space, configured in
such a way as to have attributes not offered by any one material alone. This paper describes the rationale for creating architectured
materials and criteria for deciding which combinations and configurations show the most promise.
Ó 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Holes in the material–property space lighter, stiffer structures. The arrow thus defines a vector
for material development.
Material properties can be “mapped” as material
property charts, of which Figure 1 is an example. There
are many possible charts – any pair of the properties (or 2. Architectured or hybrid materials
combinations of them) in Table 1 can be presented in
this way. All the charts have one thing in common: parts Hybrid materials are combinations of two or more
of the space are populated with materials but other parts materials, or of materials and space (Fig. 2), assembled
are not: there are holes. Some parts of the holes are inac- in such a way as to have the attributes not offered by any
cessible for fundamental reasons but others are simply one material alone [2]. Particulate and fibre composites
empty, even though, in principle, they could be filled. are examples of one type of hybrid, but there are many
Is anything to be gained by developing materials (or others: sandwich structures, foams, lattice structures,
material combinations) that lie in these holes? To answer segmented structures, zero expansion materials, and
this we need criteria of excellence to assess the merit of more. Thus to consider the potential of hybrid materials
the new material or combination. These criteria are pro- it is necessary to emphasize the choice of components
vided by material indices, material properties or prop- and their relative volume, their configuration and the
erty groups that characterize engineering performance. way they are connected to each other. The new variables
They have been described fully elsewhere [1]. If one of expand the design space, allowing the creation of new
the newly developed materials or combinations has a va- “materials” with specific property profiles (Table 2).
lue for any one of these criteria that exceeds that of One approach to filling holes, a long established one,
existing materials it has the potential to enhance engi- is that of developing new metal alloys, new polymer
neering performance. chemistries and blends, and new compositions of glass
The axes of Figure 1 are the Young’s modulus E and and ceramic so as to create monolithic materials that ex-
density q. The property combinations E/q, E1/2/q and pand the populated areas of the property charts. How-
E1/3/q are the criteria of excellence for selecting materi- ever, being long established they are well tried and the
als for light, stiff structures, i.e. ties, beaks and panels. gains tend to be incremental, rather than step-like. An
They are fully explained in Ashby [1]. A grid of the lines alternative is to combine two or more existing materials
of one index, E1/3/q, is plotted in Figure 1. The arrow in a chosen architecture so as to allow superimposition
lies normal to the merit lines. If the filled areas can be of their properties, in short to create hybrids. The great
expanded in the direction of the arrow (i.e. to greater success of carbon and glassfibre reinforced composites,
values of E1/3/q) the materials so created will enable at one extreme, and of synthetic foamed materials, at
another (hybrids of material and space), in filling the
previously empty areas of the property chart is an
E-mail: mfa2@eng.cam.ac.uk
1359-6462/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2012.04.033
M. Ashby / Scripta Materialia 68 (2013) 4–7 5
Matrix
Reinforcement
Material
A
Faces: material A B
C
D
Core: material B E