Materials Selection Using a 2-tuple Linguistic Multi-criteria Method

The materials selection can affect the design component radically, with effect on the manufacturing systems efficiency, environmental impact issues, and customer satisfaction. There are different methods employed for materials selection; however, two steps are usual for most of these methods: screening and ranking. The ranking step identifies among materials candidates those that can perform the function the best as possible. Multi-criteria methods have been widely employed to materials selection, especially in the ranking step. Most of these methods take advantage of fuzzy numbers and linguistic variables to process qualitative information and information with uncertainties. One of the approaches that have been developed to solve issues related to make decisions in multi-criteria methods using linguistic information is the 2-tuple linguistic computational model. The main advantage of this approach is taking the “loss of information” away, which provides a higher precision on results. This paper aims to present a multi-criteria method for materials selection ranking step based on 2-tuple linguistic variables. The steps and several equations needed to apply the proposed method are described. Two case studies are presented and compare results with other methods to demonstrate the proposed method potential.

材料选择会对设计构件产生根本性影响，进而影响制造系统效率、环境影响问题及客户满意度。材料选择方法种类繁多，但多数方法通常包含两个通用步骤：筛选与排序。排序步骤会在候选材料中遴选出能够最优实现既定功能的材料。多准则方法已被广泛应用于材料选择，尤其在排序步骤中。此类方法大多借助模糊数与语言变量，来处理定性信息及存在不确定性的信息。针对多准则方法中基于语言信息的决策问题，已开发出多种解决方案，其中二元组语言计算模型（2-tuple linguistic computational model）便是其一。该方法的核心优势在于规避了‘信息丢失’问题，可提升结果的计算精度。本文旨在提出一种基于二元组语言变量的材料选择排序步骤多准则方法。本文详述了该方法的实施步骤与所需的若干公式。文中通过两个案例研究，将该方法的结果与其他方法进行对比，以验证所提方法的应用潜力。