Ranking of bridge design alternatives: a TOPSIS-FADR method

Abstract

Bridges are considered as essential structures of the transport infrastructures, which play an essential role in any road network. Therefore, the process of planning and designing bridges needs to be made efficiently. The design of bridges usually consists of two stages: conceptual design and detailed design. Designers make decisions on the overall form of the structure in the conceptual design process. This process is defined as Multi-Criteria Decision-Making problems. In this study, a modified fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method to deal with the conceptual design process under uncertainty is proposed. The proposed method uses an area-based deviation ratio to determine the degree of difference between alternatives and reference solutions of the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method. Using this ratio incorporates the effects of the membership functions into the evaluation process. To illustrate the procedure of the proposed method, an example of multi-criteria assessment of bridge design including three Multi-Criteria Decision-Making problems with quantitative and qualitative criteria is used. For validation of the results of the modified fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method, a comparative analysis is also made. The analysis shows that the results of the proposed method are consistent with the other method