Materials and Process Selection – An Integrated Approach

Materials and process selection by iterative methods, going back and forth between the set of requirements and the possible solutions is discussed in this paper. The multicriteria nature of the procedure can be dealt with in an objective manner using either predimensioning for multiple constraint problems, or value analysis for multiobjective problems. A software integrating these various approaches, together with a guide for requirements definitions, is presented and its application is illustrated in a case study.