An expert system based material selection approach to manufacturing

Abstract

Selection of proper materials for a diverse mechanism is one of the hardest tasks in the design and product improvements in various industrial applications. Materials play a vital and important function during the entire design and manufacturing process. The wrong selection of materials often leads to huge prices and ultimately results in product breakdown. Hence, the designers need to identify and select suitable materials with specific functionalities in order to attain the preferred output with the minimum cost concern and specific applicability. This paper tries to solve the materials selection problem by means of an expert system approach to manufacturing. According to this method either four or five different properties are inspected for each automotive part such as impact resistance, lightness, formability, corrosion resistance and low prices for bumpers; strength, formability, vibration absorption and low cost for flywheels; and strength, formability, corrosion resistance, biocompatibility and a small price for implants. Then, these were made more efficient using the expert system approach. Due to performing most of the above mentioned properties, polymeric materials {such as PP (polypropylene), HDPE (high density polyethylene) and PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate)} are selected for the bumpers; GFRPs (glass fiber reinforced plastics) and CFRPs (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) composites for high speed running, and cast iron and steel for low speeds for the flywheels; and finally stainless steel and polymeric materials {such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and PE (polyethylene)} were found to be the best materials for automotive parts. The selected materials were almost identical to those obtained by previous authors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.