Web-based material database for material selection and its application programming interface (api) for cad

Material selection became one of the important activities for engineers in design and manufacturing processes. A selected material at the beginning of design stage affects functionality of the designed part as well as manufacturability and cost of the final product. Unfortunately there are not many accessible material databases that can be properly used for design. In this research, a web-based material database was constructed. In order to assist designers to compare different materials, two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphs for comparison of material properties were provided via the web browser. Using these graphical tools, multi-dimensional comparison was available in more intuitive manner. In addition, this web site is open to the public, and one may add new material properties to the database in order to compare the data with existing materials. To provide the database in a commercial CAD (Computer Aided Design) environment, API (Application Programming Interface) modules were developed using Web services. The web-based material database can be accessible from http://fab.snu.ac.kr/matdb.