Material Selection, Design, And Development

While material selection is one of the most important factors in moving your project forward — or optimizing an existing process — it is also one of the most complicated and, often, difficult. Product material selection can provide the gateway to solving problems of part performance, process inefficiencies or issues, or a combination of both — which cannot be overcome through design alone. It can also enable the development of entirely new products offering performance attributes not attained by any existing products, or comparable performance at significantly lower cost, or in some instances even significantly higher performance at lower cost.

Do you want to have a polymer or composite part fabricated but you are not sure what is the best process to use or which material is right for the application? Are you interested in the development of a new material to meet specialized, niche product or process requirements? Simply let us know the properties required for your part or application. We will work with you to select the most cost-effective material having suitable properties for your part, according to the specific needs and priorities of your project. If you wish, we can also help you prototype, manufacture, and evaluate the part. 

With the right polymer material selection or composite material selection, your overall product development process can immediately become much more efficient, with benefits including:

  • Improved suitability for manufacturing
  • Fewer part defects
  • Proactive attention to manufacturability
  • An earlier start to commercializing and scaling your product
  • Lower product cost
  • Improved product performance

Our material selection consulting services can also offer valuable insights for existing products or designs. Are you already making the part but having problems with its fabrication process or its end-use performance characteristics? For example, perhaps your polymer does not have adequate melt flow to fill the mold unless the temperature is made so high as to cause significant thermooxidative degradation. Or, perhaps your fabricated part fails prematurely and/or catastrophically during use, and you need to figure out why and then find a way to fix the problem. Again, we can help.

Part material selection is more than just expertise in materials, properties, and applications. Vast amounts of data are available on the properties of polymers and composites, and databases are available for material selection research and selection. These databases, and the data they contain, require more analysis than simply searching for the cross-section of specific part requirements and choosing from the results. Deep expertise and experience are essential to properly analyze both the requirements and properties that are input, and the results that they return.

With an intricate understanding of the properties, interactions, and relationships of polymers and composites — across a broad range of industries, materials, product types, and project requirements — Bicerano & Associates draws on decades of experience to properly analyze and interpret that available material data, guiding you to exactly the right material for your needs, selected from the vast breadth of combinations available.

Solving Polymer & Composite Material Selection Problems

We solve polymer and composite material selection, design, and development problems by providing:

  • Information, insights, and recommendations on the selection of materials for specific applications; based on our wealth of knowledge, experience, and electronic databases of product, process, and market data.
  • Breadth and depth of expertise in formulation-structure-processing-morphology-property-performance relationships in polymers and composites.
  • ISO-9001 certified analytical laboratory facilities and expertise to measure structure and properties.
  • Other laboratories with specialized resources. For example, the capabilities of service laboratories focusing on advanced composites, textiles, materials used in oil and gas exploration and production, surface science, and optics, as well as of laboratories at universities and nonprofit research institutions, have also been utilized when needed in past projects.
  • Polymer material design and composite material design services to identify, develop, and produce unique, state-of-the-art materials created especially for your product if needed.
  • Leading-edge business, market, and technical intelligence resources.

Our emphasis is on delivering reliable results as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible. Please contact us to discuss your material selection, design, and development needs. The first consultation session is always provided free of charge.

Looking for more information on this subject? Check out these posts from Dr. Bicerano's Blog:

Call Bicerano & Associates Consulting, LLC at (912) 235-2238 or use our online form or email us at bicerano@polymerexpert.biz today!