Application of multivariate loss function and distance function approaches for materials selection

Abstract

Material selection plays a pivotal role in design and manufacturing of a part/product. A wrong material selection decision may increase the production time/cost, and may be responsible for poor quality and early failure of the product. The design engineers select materials based on their properties which match with the product requirements. With the availability of a wider range of feasible materials having diversified properties, the material selection process now becomes more and more critical. The past researchers have already proposed different mathematical tools and techniques to ease out this material selection decision making procedure. However, each of those techniques has its own pros and cones. This paper proposes the application of two quality functions, e.g. multivariate loss function and distance function to solve three real time material selection problems. For all the solved examples, it is observed that the position of the top-ranked material remains the same as compared with the observations of the past researchers. It thus validates the potentiality and applicability of multivariate loss function and distance function approaches in solving complex real time material selection problems.