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The selection of a material for a specific engineering purpose is a lengthy and expensive process. Approximately always more than one material is suitable for an engineering application, and the final selection is a compromise that brings some advantages as well as disadvantages. One of the issues that emerges from this review is that regardless of the relation of design stages and process selection with material selection, screening and ranking are two vital steps in the material selection. A variety of quantitative selection procedures have been developed to solve this issue, so that a systematic evaluation can be made. This paper seeks to address the following questions: (1) what is the contribution of the literature in the field of screening and choosing the materials? (2) What are the methodologies/systems/tools for material selection of engineering components? (3) Which approaches were prevalently applied? (4) Is there any inadequacy of the approaches? This research not only provides evidence that the multi-criteria decision making approaches has the potential to greatly improve the material selection methodology, but also aids the researchers and decision makers in applying the approaches effectively.

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In engineering design, material alternatives evaluate according to different criteria depending on the objectives of the problem. Performance ratings for different criteria are measured by different units, but in the decision matrix in order to have a valid comparison all the elements must be dimensionless. However, a lot of normalization methods have been developed for cost and benefit criteria, not only there has not been enough attention for engineering design situations in which approaching the target values are desirable but also the available methods have shortcomings. A new version of VIKOR method, which covers all types of criteria with emphasize on compromise solution, is proposed in this paper. The proposed comprehensive version of VIKOR also overcomes the main error of traditional VIKOR by a simpler approach. Suggested method can enhance exactness of material selection results in different applications, especially in biomedical application where the implant materials should possess similar properties to those of human tissues. Five examples are included to illustrate and justify the suggested method.

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IntroductionFulvestrant shows dose-dependent biological activity. Greater estrogen-receptor (ER) blockade may feasibly be achieved by combining fulvestrant with anastrozole. This pre-surgical study compared fulvestrant plus anastrozole versus either agent alone in patients with ER-positive breast cancer.MethodsIn this double-blind, multicenter trial, 121 patients received fulvestrant 500 mg on Day 1 plus anastrozole 1 mg/day for 14 to 21 days (F + A); fulvestrant plus anastrozole placebo (F); or fulvestrant placebo plus anastrozole (A), 2 to 3 weeks before surgery. ER, progesterone-receptor (PgR) and Ki67 expression were determined from tumor biopsies before treatment and at surgery.ResultsA total of 103 paired samples were available (F, n = 35; F+A, n = 31; A, n = 37). All treatments significantly reduced mean ER expression from baseline (F: -41%, P = 0.0001; F + A: -39%, P = 0.0001; A: -13%, P = 0.0034). F and F + A led to greater reductions in ER versus A (both P = 0.0001); F + A did not lead to additional reductions versus F. PgR and Ki67 expression were significantly reduced with all treatments (means were -34% to -45%, and -75% to -85%, respectively; all P = 0.0001), with no differences between groups.ConclusionsIn this short-term study, all treatments reduced ER expression, although F and F + A showed greater reductions than A. No significant differences were detected between the treatment groups in terms of PgR and Ki67 expression. No additional reduction in tumor biomarkers with combination treatment was observed, suggesting that F + A is unlikely to have further clinical benefit over F alone.Trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT00259090.

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