A Taguchi Optimization of Cooling Slope Casting Process Parameters for Production of Semi-solid A356 Alloy and A356-5TiB2in-situ Composite Feedstock

The cooling slope technique is the oncoming semi-solid process. The primary objective of this research is to optimize the process parameters of the cooling slope casting process and to generate the semi-solid feedstock suitable for thixoforming process. Taguchi design of experiments methodology has been employed to examine the effects of process parameters mainly the pouring temperature, slope angle and cooling length on the hardness behavior of A356 alloy processed by cooling slope casting route. The optimum parameter combination was obtained by using the analysis of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio with hardness of semi-solid A356 alloy as the response variable. The level of importance of the parameters on the hardness determined by analysis of variance (ANOVA) resulted in the optimal values of 640 oC pouring temperature, at a slope angle of 60o and 300 mm cooling length for higher hardness of the alloy and composites. The pouring temperature was the most influential parameter on the hardness of the semi-solid feedstock generated by cooling slope casting route.