Taguchi method applied to parametric appraisal of erosion behavior of GF-reinforced polyester composites

Polyester composites reinforced with three different weight fractions of woven E-glass fiber reinforcement are developed. To study the effect of various operational and material parameters on erosive wear behavior of these composites in an interacting environment erosion tests are carried out. For this purpose, air jet type erosion test rig and the design of experiments approach utilizing Taguchi's orthogonal arrays are used. The findings of the experiments indicate that the rate of erosion of composites by impact of solid erodent is greatly influenced by the control factors. An optimal parameter combination is determined, which leads to minimization of erosion rate. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed on the measured data and S/N (signal to noise) ratios. A correlation derived from the results of Taguchi experimental design is proposed as a predictive equation for estimation of erosion wear rate of these composites. It is demonstrated that the predicted results obtained using this equation are consistent with experimental observations. Finally, optimal factor settings for minimum wear rate are determined using genetic algorithm. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.