Weighting of Natural Fibre Criteria for Fibre Metal Laminate Using Entropy Method

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Material selection is one of the crucial stages in design and development process which depend on various physical, mechanical and manufacturing properties. To increase the success probability of the product, the designer needs to decide the suitable material. Therefore, to increase the reliability of the product, entropy method could be applied to determine the importance of criteria for the material used. Entropy method is a highly reliable and can be adjusted to information measurement to determine weighting criteria in decision making environment. Weighting criteria of material play a very significant role in the ranking results of the material selection. Therefore, the aim of this study is to utilise entropy method to rank the main criteria of the natural fibre used in fibre metal laminate panel for car front hood design. It is important to define the main criteria of materials during the material selection process to prevent any mechanical failure and to control the raw material cost. Most of the fibre metal laminate in the market utilise synthetic fibre, while natural fibre is rarely explored. Entropy method was applied to determine the main criteria weighting of natural fibre using five criteria. The result showed the highest rank to the lowest rank for the main criteria is density, stiffness, water absorption, cost and finally availability.

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