Development of a decision support system to select materials for pressure vessels

Improvements in technologies applied in material field and continual increase in the number of material types force to develop and use new approaches in material selection. In this paper, a multi-criteria decision support system, called MATSEL, is developed to make material selection decisions for pressure vessel components more thorough and inclusive. MATSEL consists of two separate stages. In the first elimination stage of the MATSEL, it obtains a feasible set of materials for a specified pressure vessel component. MATSEL, then, uses three different multi criteria approaches namely ELECTRE, TOPSIS and VIKOR in the second stage to rank the feasible materials. An overall total score is obtained by summing the rankings of every feasible material and MATSEL proposes the material with the lowest total score as the most suitable one for the specified component. In this study, the statistical similarities between the rankings are also calculated to analyze the differences between rankings if there are any. Instead of inputting the materials every time MATSEL is used, a material data base is formed with the usage of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and Ashby material selection diagrams for selection of alternative materials for the specified application.