Materials Selection Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) Methods

From the engineering perspective, material selection is a process aimed at identification of the suitable material which after manufacturing will have the desired dimensions, shape and properties necessary for the product to demonstrate its required function at the lowest cost. While selecting the best material for a product, the design engineer has to critically analyze the functional requirements of that product. To cut down the cost of the finished product, many new materials are now available in the market, but the design engineer has to check the properties and feasibilities of those materials in order to fulfill the desired objective. The large number of materials with their diverse properties makes the job of the design engineer more complex than before. The design engineer has to take into account a large number of material selection criteria before arriving at the final decision, otherwise, there may be premature failure of the product during its operation. In this paper, considering the material selection as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, the best material for a flywheel is selected using five most widely used and computationally easy MCDM methods. The rankings of the alternative materials as obtained using these MCDM methods almost match with that derived by the past researchers.