Comparative analysis of Fuzzy MCDM methods for material selection in biomedical application

Abstract

Material plays a vital role in an engineering design process. Selecting the appropriate material for a certain product is the vital task for engineering designer. In order to fulfil design requirement, the designer need to evaluate material alternatives by following a systematic selection. If the selection process is carried out haphazardly, there will be the risk of overlooking possible attractive materials. This risk can be reduced by implementing an efficient methodology. Hence, the aim of this paper is to develop a methodology, based on Fuzzy TOPSIS and sensitivity analysis, to select the appropriate material in biomedical application that is taken only as an illustrative example. Eleven candidate materials are evaluated, , to find the optimal material for a biomedical component “hip prosthesis”, and nine evaluation criteria that called: tensile strength, corrosion resistance, fatigue strength, wear resistance, elastic modulus, tissue tolerance, specific gravity and cost are considered. Co_Cr alloys_Wrought alloy are found as the best material for hip prosthesis production. The results obtained are verified via a sensitivity analysis, and also compared with the existing methods to check the robustness of the proposed methodology.