Material Selection in Additive Manufacturing for Aerospace Applications using Multi-Criteria Decision Making

Abstract

A decision-making methodology for the material selection is presented in this paper. A multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based hybrid approach, AHP-TOPSIS, was used to choose the appropriate additive manufacturing (AM) material for aerospace applications. This study evaluated nine polymer-based AM materials for an aerospace application. Experts from both industry and academia carefully finalized the selection criteria. Selected criteria are divided into three main categories: performance, economic and environmental. Firstly, the AHP approach was used to get the weights of criteria chosen via pairwise comparisons. Second, a decision matrix containing the properties of materials was created. The TOPSIS method was then applied using the AHP criteria weights and decision matrix, resulting in the final ranking of materials. ULTEM material ranked number 1 and was selected as the appropriate material for an aerospace application. Additionally, sensitivity analysis was also carried out to check the proposed method’s reliability and robustness.