Analysis of Aluminium Basalt Particulate Composite Using Stirring Casting Method Through Taguchi Method Approach

Aluminium matrix composites (AMCs) becomes a choice for automotive and aerospace industries due to its tenable mechanical properties such as high hardness and good strength to weight ratio. Reinforcement like particulate alumina, silicon carbide, graphite, fly ash, etc can easily be incorporated in the melt using cheap and widely available stirring casting method. This research investigates the optimum hardness of AMCs containing basalt powder as reinforcement by setting varying parameter. The design of experiments (DOE) approach using Taguchi method orthogonal arrays L9 (33) factors 3 runs 9, was employed to predict the hardness of material casting with variable parameters such as matrix composition, stirring time, and particle size (mesh) of basalt. ANOVA and S/N ratio for determining optimum hardness (HRb) material and P-value confirms most significant parameter that affects the hardness at optimum level parameters to improve the mechanical properties of AMCs. Analysed Taguchi design observed that particle size (mesh) of basalt has a significant contribution on hardness (72.71%) followed by concentration of basalt (18.62%) and stirring time (8.45%) with an error about 0.22%. Based from previous study and field experiment, this result is match especially from different particle size will affect most of mechanical properties of composite materials.