Automotive Composites and Polymer Material Selection for Fairing of a Human Powered Vehicle Using Multi-Attribute Decision Making Methodology

Vehicle performance is highly dependent on the design and material used. Fairing of a Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) is responsible for the reduction in the aerodynamic drag force and its material determines the overall weight and the top speed of the vehicle. Selection of material for fairings depends on various physical, mechanical and manufacturing properties along with practical considerations like availability of material. Today, an ever-increasing variety of composite materials and polymers are available, each of them possessing their own characteristics, applications, advantages and limitations. Many automotive composites are used for manufacturing fairings. Materials like Carbon fiber, Glass fiber (E glass, S glass), Aramid fiber (Kevlar 29, Kevlar 49) are some of the viable options that have been used in the past for manufacturing fairing of HPVs. The problem of material selection arises because of conflicting attributes of different alternative materials with respect to the application. The selection of an optimal material for an engineering design from among two or more alternatives is a Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem. In this paper, MADM methods like fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) have been applied to investigate the problem of material selection for the vehicle. The proposed approach will be a valuable resource for decision making that includes qualitative factors as well as subjective way of assigning relative importance among various attributes.