Design Scheme Selection of Railway Freight Car Using a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

Design scheme selection of railway freight car is a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem which includes fuzzy and uncertain factors. In order to obtain the optimal alternative in the decision-maker judgment, a model of combining fuzzy set theory with an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed. Using the triangular fuzzy numbers as a pair-wise comparison scale derives the priorities of different selection criteria and attributes. Adopted fuzzy prioritization method uses fuzzy pair-wise comparison judgments rather than exact numerical values of the comparison ratios and transforms the initial fuzzy prioritization problem into a non-linear program. As an example, three design schemes were compared and evaluated. The case study shows that the proposed method is a simple and effective tool for treating the uncertainty problems.