An intelligent method for selecting optimal materials and its application

Material selection is associated with all design and manufacturing problems. This paper presents an intelligent method to deal with the materials selection problems wherein the design configurations, working conditions, as well as the design-relevant information are not precisely known. The presented method is applied to select optimal materials for robotic components at an early stage of design. A computing tool is developed in order to implement the method. Unlike other materials selection methods, the presented method does not require derivation of material indices, extraction of "if ... then ..." rules, or cumbersome inference calculations. However, like material index based selection method, it uses widely available material property charts as material-relevant information. This way the method is made more user-friendly and realistic.