OPTIMIZATION OF HARDENING PROCESS PARAMETERS USING CHEMICALLY MODIFIED BIOQUENCHANTS VIA TAGUCHI APPROACH

Abstract

In this research work, Taguchi method was applied to optimize quenching hardness using best combination of hardening process parameters by quenching in chemically modified bioquenchants. High carbon steel samples were hardened by adjusting the process parameters. Several experiments have been conducted based on an orthogonal array L4 with three parameters (austenitizing temperature, austenitizing time and agitation amplitude) at two levels (low and high). Based on the mean response and signal to noise (S/N) ratio, the best optimal parameters setting was arrived for all the bioquenchants used. Confirmation experiments have been carried out to verify the optimized hardness results. The values of the per cent errors for the predicted and experimental results obtained are within the prescribed limit. The bioquenchants used include; epoxidized cottonseed oil (EC), epoxidized-transesterified cottonseed oil (ETC), transesterified cotton seed oil (TC), fresh cotton seed oil (FC), epoxidizedmahogany seed oil (EM), epoxidized-transesterified mahogany seed oil (ETM), transesterified mahogany seed oil (TM) and fresh mahogany seed oil (FM). From the results, maximum hardness values were obtained from all the bioquenchants. This approach is cost-effective, since it reduces the number of experimental trials.