Optimization of Mechanical Properties of Epoxy based Wood Dust Reinforced Green Composite Using Taguchi Method

In the present era of product development, composites are being used because of the ease in manufacturing and low weight to volume ratio. Moreover apart from the above the increasing awareness towards environmental issues and the requirement of more versatile polymer based materials has led to higher interest in natural fibre/ filler composites, i.e. green composite. In this paper, sundi wood dust reinforced epoxy composites were processed with six different % filler content. The tensile and flexural tests are performed at three different speeds to study the mechanical behaviour of the composites. Experiments were conducted based on Taguchi L18 orthogonal array considering two design parameters viz. speed and % filler wt. The experimental data were analyzed using Taguchi optimization method. Optimal settings of the process parameters for load, tensile and flexural stress were determined. Experimental data obtained were statistically analyzed and the optimized sets of values of the various parameters were depicted. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis was carried out to obtain the significant factors for load, tensile and flexural stress. It was observed from the analysis that speed is the main significant factor affecting the load and tensile stress values but for flexural stress % filler wt. is the main significant factor at 95% confidence level. A confirmation test was carried out to validate the optimized results and it was found that there were improvements in S/N ratios from initial to optimal setting.