Material selection tool in building element design

Selection of the materials satisfying the expected performances is significantly important for any design. Today, with the constantly evolving and developing technologies, there are more than numerous options of materials to be used in an architectural design. In such a wide material "pond" it is even more crucial to make the "right" choice of materials. At this point, the necessity of the use of some support tools is arising, therefore the necessity of being more systematic. Material selection as a sub process of building element design is a hard task especially for the architecture students with a minimum material knowledge. In order to overcome such a problem one of the approaches is the use of methodical support tools within the process. With respect to that approach a systematic material selection tool is developed, YETMSA. The material selection tool intends to define the main steps of the process and to guide the students. The material selection tool that is to be developed has to systematize the "intuitive approach" in material selection process. The issued material selection tool is mainly developed for educational purposes and trying to show a more methodic way of material selection in architectural detailing for the use of architecture students with the minimum knowledge of materials. What are the encountered problems of an architecture student in a material selection process of detail design? How could this process be systematized? How could the material selection process become more practical? For that purpose, the developed material selection tool YETMSA, which is to be used within the bulding element design process, predifines some guiding steps. The material selection tool embraces technical properties of materials with respect to building elements functional requirements, sensual properties of materials with respect to the identity of design and properties related to materials' environmental impacts with respect to the sustainability of the design. The tool is presenting an education model in architecture, for the apprehention of a systematic material selection process within the building element design. YETMSA offers different paths to be followed by the use of different sources. Architecture students who are to be taught this tool, would learn the basic steps for matieral selection and learn possible sources that could be used during the process. Hence as a student, they would apprehend the methodic material selection approach and could find their own material selection process for their profesional use. Within the scope of this study, design support tools, the existing methodic approaches for the building element design and material selection process, material properties, the existing material data bases, the existing methodic approaches for the decision making process are examined. The method followed in this work has two main sections, first one is the examination and application of the existing methods and second one is the development of the stages of material selection tool and their applications. First of all, from the existing methodic approaches for the material selection process found by the literature review, the ones offering enough information about its process and competible with the building element design process, 9 method is chosen for further examination. Methods for architectural design could be listed as; Balanlı, Japon Araştırma Enstitüsü, Lohaus ve Steinborn, Müller, Cronberg, Sneck and methods for industrial or engineering design could be listed as; Ashby, George, Charles. After preliminary examination of the methods and conducted individual applications through a pilot project, the methods are classified and flow charts presenting the main steps of each method has been drawn. Then the methods are applied by architecture students and newly graduate architects through different design problems. According to their feedbacks the methods applicability in a material selection process are evaluated and their prositive and negative aspects ara determined. Finally, with respect to individual evaluations of each method and the results of the applications, the strong and weak sides of the existing material selection tools are presented. The developed tool should be setting the basic steps of material selection process in architectural detail design, aiming to be guiding, easily applied, fast, and result oriented. However, the existing methodic approaches for the material selection shown to be complicated, time comsuming and requires background information about materials. Therefore they has to be examined, simplified and transformed to be more "practical" with the addition of a data base usage. A main flow chart of the material selection tool has been developed with the objective to apply the strong aspects of the existing methods and develope their weak sides. Within the process several different aspects of maaterial selection process is investigated and 4 different stages of the tool has been developed. Then each stage is applied through a differnt design problem, the application process is recorded and comparative results are obtained by the conducted questionaires. First stage of the tool is investigating the material selection proces of architecture students and examinig the use of a data base in the process. According to the optained results, students ara tend to make their desicions according to the visual charecteristics of the material rather than its technical properties. Furthermore, usage of an online material data base offering comparative values of materials properties found to be usefull in the ways of showing different options and makes the decision easier. Second developed stage, investigates the material selection process wtihin the building element design and exaiming the usage of different material data bases together. In order to select the most suitable material for the desing all the aspect of it should be taken into considiration. For that purpose, technical properties of matierials with respect to building elements functional requirements, sensual properties of materials with respect to the identity of design and properties related to materials' environmental impacts with respect to the sustainability of the design are defined and set the parameters fort he evaluation. Results of the applications shows that, usage of a data base offering search by area of use together with a data base offering comparative values of materials properties is beneficial. The third and fourth stages of the tool are investigating the possible and ideal usages of different sources. As a result, different pats to flow for different designers and different designs is emerged. According to their needs, users could chose, different flows over different usages of different data bases. Finally the developed material selection tool, YEMSA, is became a flexible tool, which is to be used by architecture students and newly graduate architects, satisfiying the differents needs of different designers and different designs. There are 5 main paths to flow are determined within the tool, but by the various combinations of different data bases and their differnt ways of usage more paths could be crated by the users. Path A: Control of a single material property of, comparision of possible materials. Path B: Material selection path which offers the fastest way, with the necessity of minimum background knowledge, but a rather low reliability. Path C: Material selection path which offers a rather fast way, with the necessity of medium background knowledge, but a medium reliability. Path D: Material selection path which offers the maksimum reliablity, but a rather slow way with the necessity of intermediate background knowledge. Path Z: Ideal path of the material selection tool, YEMSA, which is to be applied by the use of an ideal material data base. In conlusion, Material Selection Tool In Building Element Design is taking the whole and piece relation of building element and material into consideration. It has a flexible structure that answers different needs of different designs and designers. With different desicion models offered in the tool, it offers both an evaluation according to the sensual properties of the materials and with a more numeric perspective, an evaluation according to techinal properties of the materials. The tool guide the users with a minimum background information to determine the required material properties related to the performances of the building element. Moreover, the tool shows the ideal possible usages of different sources, like material data bases, within the selection process.