OPTIMAL MACHINING CONDITIONS FOR TURNING OF PARTICULATE METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES USING TAGUCHI AND RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGIES

Abstract

The present investigation focuses on the influence of machining parameters on the surface finish obtained in turning of LM25 Al/SiC particulate composites. The experiments are conducted based on Taguchi's experimental design technique. In this work, the effect of machining parameters on the surface roughness is evaluated and optimum machining conditions for maximizing the metal removal rate and minimizing the surface roughness are determined using response surface methodology. A second-order response surface model for the surface roughness is developed to predict the surface roughness. The predicted values and measured values are fairly close to each other, which indicates that the developed model can be effectively used to predict the surface roughness on the machining of Al/SiC-MMC composites with 95% confidence intervals within the ranges of parameters studied.