ABSTRACT
Material characteristics are the cornerstone for material identification and performance evaluation of a part made using reverse engineering. One of the most frequently asked questions in reverse engineering is what material characteristics should be evaluated to ensure the equivalency of two materials. Theoretically speaking, we can claim two materials are “the same” only when all their characteristics have been compared and found equivalent. This can be prohibitively expensive, and might be technically impossible. In engineering practice, when sufficient data have demonstrated that both the materials having equivalent values of relevant characteristics will usually deem having met the requirements with acceptable risk. The determination of relevant material characteristics and their equivalency requires a comprehensive understanding of the material and the functionality of the part that was made of this material. To convincingly argue which properties, ultimate tensile strength, fatigue strength, creep resistance, or fracture toughness, are relevant material properties that need to be evaluated in a reverse engineering project, the engineer needs at least to provide the following elaboration:
1. Property criticality: Explain how critical this relevant property is to the part’s design functionality.
