BS-11 — Properties of Materials
Properties of materials for mechanical, thermal and electrical applications. Atomic bonding, solid solutions, crystallisation. Equilibrium phase diagrams, applications to steel and aluminium alloys, heat treatments. Structure and special properties of polymers and ceramic materials. General characteristics of metallic composites, polymeric composites and concrete. Introduction to materials in hostile environments: corrosion, creep at high temperature, refractory materials, subnormal temperature brittle fracture.
Subject outline BS-11 Properties of Materials is a Basic Studies technical exam (PEO National Examination 04-BS-11) on how the structure of a material sets its properties: atomic bonding, crystal structures, Miller indices and density from lattice data, crystal defects and grain boundaries, the tensile test and the properties read from it, fracture toughness and the statistics of ceramic failure, phase diagrams and the lever rule, heat treatment of steel on the iron–carbon and TTT diagrams, diffusion and the Arrhenius relation, polymers, their processing and stress relaxation, and corrosion. The paper is 3 hours and closed book: the only aids are an approved Casio or Sharp calculator and the paper's own front page, which prints the atomic masses, a few constants and conversions, the SI prefixes and a few useful equations. Each paper has seven questions; any five constitute a complete paper — only the first five as they appear in the answer book are marked — and all questions are of equal value. What this course gives you Worked solutions — all fourteen questions from December 2018 and December 2019, every lettered part, fully retypeset as live text and maths, with the final answers pulled out ahead of the working and 31 authored diagrams and charts set into the solutions. Every published step was checked, and twelve that do not survive checking are flagged at the step that goes wrong, each explained at that point with the corrected value or verdict beside it. The largest: the December 2019 rhodium density is published as 7.52 g/cm³ when its own numbers give 12.5 (handbook 12.41); the December 2019 fastener life is worked from a different set of stresses from the ones on the paper (427 h instead of 352 h); the December 2018 phosphorus flux carries a factor-of-1000 slip and stops before the answer; three of the four corrosion verdicts in December 2019 Q7(a) contradict passivation, anodic etching and the area effect; and the density the December 2018 vanadium question asks for is never computed. Smaller ones — an inverted radius ratio, an edge-crack factor given for a centre crack, a missing minus sign, muddled heat-treatment temperatures and two routes to a true stress that disagree — are flagged the same way. Nothing is silently overwritten: where the published solution gives a figure, it is kept beside the correction. Study notes — ten condensed topics, from bonding and crystal structure through mechanical properties, fracture, fatigue and creep, thermal and electrical properties, phase diagrams and diffusion to the classes of engineering materials and materials in hostile environments, each with the relations the papers use and 31 authored diagrams and charts between them. Practice & case studies — ten multiple-choice questions and five longer problems — two of them engineering case studies — with worked answers for every one. All fifteen are written for this course; none is taken from the two papers. Formula sheet — two pages of every relation both papers use. The exam is closed book, so this is the sheet to learn, not a sheet to take in. Printable resources — ten reference sheets — a crystal-structures card, a tensile-test worksheet, a table of typical property values, an Fe–C and heat-treatment card, a TTT reading card, the galvanic series, a polymer and composite selector, a diffusion and Arrhenius card, a fracture, fatigue, creep and ceramics card, and an exam-day checklist — plus four blank exam stationery templates. Reference links — six selected reference websites and four YouTube videos and playlists, each with a note on what it is good for. Practice papers — the two question papers on their own, unmarked, for a timed run.