Selection of Hydro-Turbine Blade Material: Application of Fuzzy Logic (MCDA)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide background information, motivation for applications and an exposition to the methodologies employed in the development of fuzzy logic based decision making in hydro or water power engineering by optimum selection of hydro turbine blade material. All the works on the application of multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) or fuzzy logic to material science and engineering for selection of proper material have reported encouraging results till date. In our views, the lack of negative results might be due to the simplification of engineering or commercial material problems to manageable and predictable situations. Our appraisal of the literature suggests that the interface between material science and engineering and artificial intelligent systems or multi criteria decision analysis or fuzzy logic technique, is still blur. The need to formalize the computational and intelligent systems engineering methodology used in materials engineering, therefore, arises. Although our study focuses on hydro power related engineering or commercial materials in particular, we think that our finding applies to other areas of engineering as well. To the best of the authors knowledge this novel multi criteria decision analysis or fuzzy logic approach of optimized selection of hydro turbine blade material for small hydro power generation is absent in material science for renewable energy literatures due to its assessment complexity.