Material selection using preferential ranking methods

The role of materials in the engineering design process has already been well recognized. Choice of an appropriate material for a particular product is one of the critical tasks for the designers. Designers need to identify materials with specific functionalities in order to find feasible design concepts and fulfill the product's end requirements. There is a vast array of materials with diverse properties available to the designers to satisfy different design requirements. The large number of available materials together with the complex relationships between various selection criteria, often make the material selection process a difficult and time consuming task. A systematic and efficient approach towards material selection is necessary in order to select the best alternative for a given engineering application. This paper focuses on the application of four preference ranking-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods for solving a gear material selection problem. These are extended PROMETHEE II (EXPROM2), complex proportional assessment of alternatives with gray relations (COPRAS-G), ORESTE (Organization, Rangement Et Synthese De Donnes Relationnelles) and operational competitiveness rating analysis (OCRA) methods. Using these four methods, a list of all the possible choices from the best to the worst suitable materials is obtained taking into account different material selection criteria. The ranking performance of these methods is also compared with that of the past researchers. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.