Material selection of a mechanical component based on criteria relationship evaluation and MCDM approach

Abstract Appropriate material selection of a mechanical component is a vital and complex task as it involves lot of criteria and materials to ponder upon. An approach based on systematic evaluation of the impact of the criteria and sound mathematical tool for ranking of the screened material is required for apt material selection. This paper primarily focusses on the application of decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to establish and understand the criteria relationship and a comparatively new multi criteria decision making (MCDM) method to rank the material. The evaluated result is then compared with the past work and finally Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient is also determined indicating the validity and effectiveness of the adopted method.