Materials selection for lighter wagon design with a weighted property index method

Selection of appropriate materials for a distinct mechanism is one of the most difficult duties in the design and product developments in various industrial applications. Materials play a critical and significant role during the complete design and manufacturing process. Incorrect selection of materials frequently leads to enormous cost connection and eventually results in product failure. Therefore, the designers are required to recognize and select appropriate materials with specific functionalities in order to achieve the desired output with minimum cost involvement and specific applicability. This paper attempts to solve the materials selection problem using the recent weighted property index method (WPIM) to select the materials for lighter wagon design. In this method five different properties are selected as required characteristics including density, cost, specific stiffness, corrosion and wear resistance. Then they were optimized using the weighted property index method. Due to the low density, corrosion resistance and convenient specific stiffness aluminum, magnesium, and titanium alloys were considered as substitutes for steel substitution in the problem. As a result of the present weighted property index method, Al alloys were found to be the best materials for lighter wagons. The selected materials agreed almost completely with those obtained by previous authors.

► Al alloys were found as the best materials for lighter wagons.
► 98% weight has been obtained in case of using aluminum instead of steel for the wagon walls.
► Walls are 2 times safer in case of using distributed loading comparing to the single one.
► Welding process of the walls made from aluminum was performed via MIG–MAG or TIG welding techniques under carbon dioxide or argon gas atmosphere.