Failure effects and resolution of modes: a novel FMEA treatise for finalizing mould designs in foundries

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel strategy to finalize the mould design of a specific cast component through the failure analysis using case study data of a foundry. Traditional failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is one of the effective tools for prioritizing the possible failure modes by calculating the Risk priority Number (RPN) of a process/design. But in foundries, prioritizing the failures through the traditional FMEA produces unmatched results when RPN values are identical during preproduction trials. Hence it is very difficult to finalize moulds design of a specific cast component using traditional FMEA approach. This research paper addresses an alternate FMEA approach named FEAROM (Failure Effects And Resolution of Modes) to resolve the difficulty in finalizing the mould designs. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used for validating the results obtained using FEAROM method. The results presented are based on an experimental study carried out for a specific component in a foundry using the sand casting method. It is found that proposed FEAROM model matches well in practice and produces quality castings.

Keywords

• FMEA
• FEAROM
• RPC Index
• mould design