Experimental Study on Surface Roughness and Cutting Force in Turning of Al7032 Reinforced with SiC Using Taguchi Design

Abstract

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) are now gaining their usage in aerospace, automotive industries because of their excellent engineering properties like low wear rate and high strength to weight ratio. MMCs are hardly machined due to the presence of hard particles in the base phase, such as silicon carbide particles. In this paper, the effect of several factors (spindle speed, depth of cut, feed rate and weight percent of silicon carbide) have been investigated on the parameters of surface roughness and cutting force in the turning operation of AL7032 composite reinforced with SiC. Using the Minitab software and Taguchi method, the design of experiments was carried out in nine experiments in two types of dry machining and machining using mineral oil. Also, analysis of variance and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) were used to compare the machining conditions and the effect of each input parameter on surface roughness and cutting force. Analysis of variance shows that the weight percentages of silicon carbide and depth of cut have the greatest effect on the surface roughness. On the other hand, the main factors affecting cutting force are the depth of cut and feed rate. It was also found that the use of mineral oil during machining has a significant effect on reducing surface roughness and cutting force.