| Summary: The surface roughness of wood and wood-based materials is very significant in terms of assessing the quality of final products. It is a fact that determining the priorities of factors that poses an important effect on surface roughness will play the key role for success in enhancing the product quality. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the prioritization of factors that have significant effects on the surface roughness of wood and wood-based materials in sawing and planing processes. Firstly, hierarchical structures of the decision problems that consist of three levels (goal, main factors and subfactors) were devised. Secondly, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy AHP methods were employed to determine the weights of the surface roughness factors. Finally, the prioritization of the surface roughness factors was done according to the weights obtained via AHP and fuzzy AHP. The most significant factors for the sawing process were detected as feed speed, cutting speed, tooth shape and geometry, and number of teeth. Furthermore, feed speed, tool geometry, chip shape and thickness, and material defect were found as the most important factors for the planing process.
The findings of the study showed that the furniture and forest products industry should focus more on the above-mentioned factors to provide satisfying surface quality. Consequently, this study provides a useful guide to the furniture and forest products industry in terms of the improvement of the surface quality of wood and wood-based products. |
