Selection of coating material for magnesium alloy using Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS

Magnesium alloys are inherently negative electrochemical potential and are very reactive compared to other engineering metals. They are prone to galvanic corrosion and micro cracks. Various coating materials or Alternatives and the required criteria and sub-criteria for the selection of Alternatives for AZ31B magnesium alloy substrate are identified by means of literature review. Criteria weight and the rank of the alternatives are usually vague and hence uncertainty prevails. The best Alternative from several potential “Candidates”, subject to several criteria and sub-criteria, needs to get decided. In such cases, multi criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques help in determining the MOST suitable coating material. This paper concentrates on the selection of coating material for the magnesium alloy substrate. The problem is subjective, uncertain and equivocal in nature. Hence in this study, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to obtain the weights of criteria and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solutions (TOPSIS) is utilised for ranking the Alternatives.