A REVIEW OF SOFT COMPUTING TECHNIQUES IN MATERIALS ENGINEERING IJARET © I A E M E

ABSTRACT Within the last three decades, a solid and real amount of research efforts has been directed at the application of soft computing (SC) techniques in engineering. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature originating from these efforts which focus on materials engineering (ME) particularly sheet metals. The primary aim is to provide background information, motivation for application and an exposition to the methodologies employed in the development of soft computing technologies in engineering. Our review shows that all the works on the application of SC to sheet metal have reported excellent, good, positive or at least encouraging results. Our appraisal of the literature suggest that the interface between material engineering and intellectual systems engineering techniques, such as soft computing, is still blur. The need to formalize the computational and intelligent system engineering methodology used in sheet material, therefore, arises. We also provide a brief exposition to our on-going efforts in this direction. Although our study focuses on materials engineering in particular, we think that our findings applies to other areas of engineering as well