Fuzzy Ahp Based Decision Support System for Technology Selection in Abrasive Water Jet Cutting Processes

Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ); which may be accepted as a relatively new and nature-friendly technology for the industry, can simply be defined as the technological process that uses a transformation of the high-pressure jet to the high-speed waterjet as a tool for cutting substance, specially materials. As this technology has the ability of cutting some multicomponent materials in all directions, with simple shape cutting, multilayer materials cutting, shape heterogeneity and also the ability of usage on soft/ hard materials [1] without sparks caused during normal cutting processes with high accuracy and reliability, the studies about this brilliant technology rapidly increase in the last years [2, 3, 4, 5]. One important problem in the usage of AWJ cutting is to decide on the appropriate technology for the material to achieve the acceptable surface quality after the cutting process. Although the AWJ is a simple technology, the solution for this multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem is not simple as the waterjet cutting process includes many factors which directly or indirectly effect the cutting process and the surface quality. Generally the MCDM is used to solve problems that have several potential solution alternatives under several criteria or attributes that may be either tangible or intangible [6, 7]. They usually focus on human judgment/inference trying to implement it into the decision models [8]. One of the most preferred MCDM models in literature is the "Analytic Hierarch Process (AHP)" introduced by Saaty in 1970's [9, 10, 11]. TheAHP, which can basically be defined as a theory of measurements which deals with quantifiable criteria that are based on the valuable experience and knowledge of decision makers that may be used as an input data for the designed MCDM model [12, 7]. Contrary to the nature of human decision making/judgment which contains and processes uncertainty or/and vagueness, crisp (discrete) sets