Joseph Misulia
MANE6960
04/19/2015
HW4.1
The microstructure of a material strongly influences many characteristics of the material.
Material strength, texture and other physical properties such as ductility, toughness, hardness,
corrosion resistance, thermal behavior or response to thermal activities, and wear resistance
are influenced in a large way by the material’s microstructure. Typical material microstructure
can be broadly classified as metallic, polymeric, ceramic and composite.
Metals for the most part have a crystalline structure and almost entirely fall into one of
three different crystalline structures: The Body Centered Cubic (BCB), The Face Centered
Cubic (FCC) and The Hexoganal Close Packed (HCP) crystalline or lattice structures.
Figure 1: Typical metallic microstructures
Polymeric material is a large particle or string of many repeated sub units. Polymeric
materials play a large role everyday life and range from many common plastics to fibrous
materials occurring in nature. The microstructure architecture of polymers contributes greatly to
their characteristics. Figure 2 below shows several different types of polymer microstructures.
Figure 2: Polymeric microstructure architecture
Ceramic materials are also made up of a crystalline structure, but are not organized in
the same way that metallic materials are. They are arranged in a less structured manner to
form a collection of grains which contributes to their more brittle properties than metals.
Composite materials can have a variety of microstructures depending soley on the
properties of their constituents.