Material selection is a step in the process of designing any physical object. In the context of product design

Product design

-Introduction:Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. It is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.Product designers conceptualize and...

, the main goal of material selection is to minimize cost while meeting product performance goals. Systematic selection of the best material for a given application begins with properties and costs of candidate materials. For example, a thermal blanket must have poor thermal conductivity

Thermal conductivity

In physics, thermal conductivity, k, is the property of a material's ability to conduct heat. It appears primarily in Fourier's Law for heat conduction....

 in order to minimize heat transfer for a given temperature difference.

Systematic selection for applications requiring multiple criteria is more complex.