Application of the Taguchi method for the optimization of the strength of polyamide 6 composite hot plate welds

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the welding parameters in the hot plate welding process of polymer composites, polyamide 6 glass fiber reinforcement 15 wt.-%, by using the Taguchi method. Four welding parameters, namely the plate temperature, heating time, welding displacement and welding time, were optimized under the consideration of the joint strength. The Taguchi approach of the parameter design was used as a statistical procedure to set the optimal welding parameters. For hot plate welding of the specimens, the combination of process parameters based on three levels of the L9 orthogonal array was utilized. The signal to noise and the analysis of variance were employed to find the optimum levels and to indicate the impact of the welding parameters on joint strength by tensile tests of welded joints. It was shown that choosing 270 °C as plate temperature, 1.0 mm of weld displacement and 25 s of heating time, reveals an improved joint strength. For the optimized parameters it was verified that the welding time does not have a significant influence and the most effective factor on joint strength is the plate temperature. The weld displacement and heating time only slightly influenced the joint strength. A confirmation run was also performed to prove the effectiveness of the Taguchi method after determination of the optimum levels of the process parameters. The results showed that the joint strength was improved by about 27 % as compared to the initial welding parameters and the joint efficiency increased from 56 % to 71 %.