Shielded Metal Arc Welding Electrode Selection Using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) Method

Abstract

An important factor in welding process is selection of appropriate welding electrode. If a wrong welding electrode is selected then it may give rise to various welding defects and ultimately lead to failure of weld.In this paper, best welding electrode is selected from available alternatives of general purpose electrodes for mild steel for Shielded Metal Arc Welding process (SMAW). The selection is done by using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. The results are then compared with other Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methods; Simple Additive Weighing (SAW), Weighted Product Method (WPM), Modified TOPSIS. The best ranked electrode by all the methods is then selected as the best welding electrode from available alternatives