Selection of green composite materials for orthopedic prosthesis using analytical hierarchy process

Abstract

A multi-criteria decision-making technique known as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to carry out the selection of the most appropriate constituent types of green composites, i.e., natural fibers and biopolymers. To perform AHP, six alternatives for each constituent of the green composite are selected, and a pairwise comparison is performed. The main criteria were considered the same for both natural fibers and biopolymers. However, for sub-criteria, 11 parameters were selected for natural fibers and nine parameters for biopolymers. The methodology is outlined for the implementation of AHP in material selection and performing simulations for finite element analysis (FEA). MATLAB is used to execute the AHP. However, for the synthesis of green composite, FEA was done on the model made of top-ranked constituents of green composite to test its mechanical characteristics and compare with the properties of the cortical bone using ANSYS. The AHP results ranked coir and polyglycolic acid as the most appropriate constituents among the considered alternatives for making a green composite by attaining an overall priority of 0.2390 and 0.2209 respectively. The consistency ratio for the selection fibres is less than 10% making the AHP results acceptable. On the other hand, consistency ratio in selection of biopolymers is 0.14 > 0.1 and the reason for this slight increase is due to the negative glass transition temperature values. The simulation results showed that the coir/PGA composite has a reasonable tendency to be used in bone plate implants.