ABSTRACT
The ever-growing variety of materials for engineering applications widens design possibilities but, coupled with the huge number of pre-requisites that make the choice more dif—cult, these usually imply tough, multi-criteria, problem-dependent optimization. To help designers address this issue, several systematic methods have been proposed over the years, aimed at selecting the best materials and work processes. As will be seen, quantity selection methods change depending on whether applied to the single properties of materials or to a mix of different properties, and according to which functionality is to be optimized, relating these to other project variables.
