【正文】
rding to Prasad [3], materials are the mon elements enumerating parts in a product realization process. Nowadays, design engineers normally rely on the materials that they are familiar with. However, when design requirements exceed the constraints of such materials or exceed the constraints on material properties, concurrent engineering teams must consider alternative materials. With direct online access to a materials database, the concurrent engineering teams could select materials that are lighter, stronger and lower in cost. Assuming that the impact of such substitutions can be analyzed or simulated, the teams could easily make an optimum selection of materials for the available processes, conserve materials for each process and thus, reduce material waste. White [4] emphasized the importance of puter aided materials selection as books have several drawbacks as they are often outdated before reaching the bookshelves. It is very difficult to index them to find answers or to sort data in the manner of your choice. A puterized system, which provides access to materials data, is not necessarily a materials selection system, although access to data is essential to facilitate selection. . Critical review This section reviews the development of puterized materials databases that enabled designers to select the materials in mechanical engineering design application. The development of material databases has been reported by Harmer [5] , Breuer et al [610], Baur [1112] , Michaeli [13] , Ashby [1415] and