Optimization of Control Parameters for Mechanical and Abrasive Wear Behavior of Graphite Filled Carbon Epoxy Composite using Grey Relational Analysis

Volume 4 Issue 4 January - March 2017

Research Paper

Optimization of Control Parameters for Mechanical and Abrasive Wear Behavior of Graphite Filled Carbon Epoxy Composite using Grey Relational Analysis

Sudarshan Rao K.*, Y.S. Varadarajan**, N. Kiran Bhat***

* Professor and Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shri Madhwa Vadiraja Institute of Technology and Management, Karnataka, India.

** Professor, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, NIE, Karnataka, India.

*** Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shri Madhwa Vadiraja Institute of Technology and Management, Karnataka, India.

Rao, K. S., Varadarajan, Y. S., and Bhat, N. K. (2017). Optimization of Control Parameters for Mechanical and Abrasive Wear Behavior of Graphite Filled Carbon Epoxy Composite using Grey Relational Analysis. i-manager’s Journal on Material Science, 4(4), 31-42. https://doi.org/10.26634/jms.4.4.10373

Abstract

Mechanical and tribological behaviors of graphite filled carbon fabric reinforced epoxy composite were investigated in the present study. Three body abrasive wear tests were conducted with four process parameters, filler content, normal load, abrading distance, and abrasive particle size. Grey Relational Analysis is used to optimize the multi performance characteristics to minimize the specific wear rate and density, and to maximize the tensile, flexural and impact strength of graphite filled carbon epoxy composite. The experiments were designed according to Taguchi's L orthogonal array 9 to optimize experimental runs. The results indicated that tensile, flexural and impact strength, and the specific wear rate of composite increased with increase in graphite filler content. Analysis of variance was applied to determine the parametric influence on the performance output. From the ANOVA it is observed that, graphite filler content has the most significant factor influencing the mechanical and wear behavior of composites. An optimized parameter combination was obtained by grey relational analysis. Finally, a confirmation test was performed according to predicted optimal parameter setting and found the successful implementation of grey based Taguchi approach.