Magnetic material selection using multiple attribute decision making approach

A large number of magnetic materials have been fabricated and found to be promising for their technological applications. However, it is difficult to select an optimal material (for technological application) because of the conflicting tradeoffs between their properties. In this context, the screening of magnetic materials is an important task. In this article, an attempt has been made to select the soft and hard magnetic materials using Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) approach. VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods (MADM techniques) are employed to evaluate the relative ranking of these materials understudy. The relative weights for the different attributes (properties) are calculated using Shannon's entropy method. It is found that (Supermalloy, Magnifer 7904) (79Ni-15Fe-5Mo-0.5Mn) and Ferrite 4 (sintered) (SrO-6Fe(2)O(3)) are the optimal materials among studied soft and hard magnetic materials, respectively. Hierarchical clustering is used to classify magnetic materials under study. Pearson correlation coefficients are calculated between the attributes under study. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.