A novel decision-making approach for light weight environment friendly material selection

Abstract Since the last few decades, the use of light weight automotive is increasing day by day to reduce fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. Now days, the automotive industries are emphasizing more on the use of light weight environment friendly materials (LWEFMs) including aluminium, polymers, magnesium, steel blends and composites due to their several inherent advantages, environmental concerns, government regulations and consumer demand. Light weight metal alloys are much preferable for their low density and high specific strength, as well as other attractive characteristics like high corrosion resistance, dimensional stability, energy saving ability and sustainability. However, deciding on the most competent LWEFM for a distinct application considering multi-perspective criteria is not an easy task to perform and restrain a great challenge for the design engineers. On the other hand, improper material selection often leads to premature product failure with reduced efficiency and poor product performance, thereby negatively affecting the productivity, profitability and status of the organization. In this paper, a humble endeavour is taken to propose a novel and contemporary decision-making approach for LWEFM selection in which criteria weights are computed using the Entropy technique and ranking of the alternatives is determined by an almost unexplored multi-attributive ideal real comparative analysis (MAIRCA) method. Seventeen candidate materials are considered as alternatives for the evaluation with respect to thirteen criteria for an automotive application. It has been observed that Ultra High Strength Steel emerges out as the best material for the considered case study. Comparison with other existing well established methods has also been performed to prove the feasibility and validity of the proposed approach