Decision Support Strategy in Selecting Natural Fiber Materials for Automotive Side-Door Impact Beam Composites

The enforcement on sustainable design and environmental-friendly products has attracted the interest of researchers and engineers in the context of replacing metals and synthetic fibers with natural based fibers,especially in the automotive industry.However,studies on sustainable natural fiber material selection in the automotive industry are limited.Evaluation for the side-door impact beam was conducted by gathering product design specification from literature which amounted to seven criteria and it was forwarded to ten decision makers with automotive engineering and product design background for evaluation.The weightage required for decision-making was obtained using the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP)method based on six criteria.Following this,the best natural fiber materials to be used as reinforcement in polymer composites were selected using the VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(VIKOR)method.The results using both the AHP and VIKOR method showed that kenaf was the best natural fiber for the side-door impact beam composites.The result showed the lowest VIKOR value,QA1=0.0000,which was determined to be within the acceptable advantage and acceptable stability conditions.It can be concluded that the application of integrated AHP-VIKOR method resulted in a systematic and justified solution towards the decision-making process.

Conceptual Design of Natural Fiber Composites as a Side-Door Impact Beam Using Hybrid Approach

This paper presents the conceptual design stage in the product development process of a natural fiber composites of the side-door impact beam,which starts from idea generation to the selection of the best design concept.This paper also demonstrates the use of the integrated Theory of Inventive Problem Solving(Function-Oriented Search)(TRIZ(FOS))and Biomimetics method,as well as the VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(VIKOR)method.The aim of this study was to generate design concepts that were inspired by nature and to select the best design concept for the composite side-door impact beam.Subsequently,eight design concepts were generated using the TRIZ(FOS)-Biomimetics method and finite element analysis were used to analyse their performance and weight criteria using ANSYS software.VIKOR method was used as the multiple criteria decision making tools to compare their performances,weight and cost criteria.As a result,design concepts B-03 and C-02 were ranked as the first and second best,with VIKOR value of 0.0156 and 0.1178,respectively,which satisfied the conditions in VIKOR method.This paper shows that the integrated method of TRIZ(FOS)-Biomimetics and VIKOR can assist researchers and engineers in developing designs that are inspired by nature,as well as in selecting the best design concept using a systematic strategy and justified solutions during the conceptual design stage.