Surface quality improvement of AZ31 Mg alloy by a combination of modified Taguchi method and simple multi objective optimization procedure

Abstract

The motive of this study is to evaluate the machinability properties of AZ31 Mg alloy in the face milling operations. Depth of cut, rate of feed and speed of cut are three input variables in the face milling process, while surface roughness (Ra) and tool nose radius deviation (dR) are performance characteristics. For three input variables each with three levels, to decrease the number of experiments, an L9 orthogonal array (OA) of Taguchi was employed which enables an efficient approach for conducting a full-factorial design of experiments. Selection of optimal parameters for the face milling process to achieve the required surface quality is accomplished through the utilization of a modified Taguchi approach and a novel multi objective optimization procedure. The work establishes empirical relationships that correlate the performance characteristics (i.e. Ra and dR) with three input variables. Corrections to the empirical relations were specified to obtain the expected range of Ra and dR. Ra and dR estimates were validated with existing test data.

Keywords

• AZ31 Mg alloy
• depth of cut
• face milling
• rate of feed
• speed of cut
• surface roughness