Optimization of heat treatment parameters of medium carbon steel quenched in different media using Taguchi method and grey relational analysis

Agboola, O.O. and Ikubanni, P.P. and Adeleke, A.A. and Adediran, A.A and Adesina, O. S. and Aliyu, S.J (2020) Optimization of heat treatment parameters of medium carbon steel quenched in different media using Taguchi method and grey relational analysis. Heliyon, 6. ISSN 04444

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Abstract

Quenching is one of the major processes of heat treatment of medium carbon steel that aims at improving itsmechanical properties. However, the effectiveness of this process is dependent on several control factors that mustbe maximized to obtain optimum results in terms of hardness, yield strength, ultimate tensile strength amongothers. This study aims at optimizing the process of improving the mechanical properties of medium carbon steelby varying some key factors like the quenchant used (A), heat treatment temperature (B), and soaking time (C).The measured responses in this study were the hardness, yield strength (YS), and ultimate tensile strength (UTS).Optimization was conducted in two stages. Thefirst stage dealt with the mono-optimization of process parametersusing Taguchi's Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio. A total of nine (9) experiments were performed based on standard L9orthogonal array because each of the three control factors has three (3) levels. The second stage was multi-objective optimization using Taguchi-based grey relational analysis (GRA). The optimal conditions for hard-ness, YS, and UTS were obtained at A2B3C3,A3B2C3, and A3B3C3, respectively. Using ANOVA as statisticalanalysis, it was observed that the soaking time was the main control factor for all three measured responses(31.95% contribution ratio for hardness, 62.46%, and 66.76% for YS and UTS, respectively), while the quenchanthad the least contribution. Analysis of the Taguchi-based GRA revealed that the results obtained are in totalconformance to that of the Taguchi method, with soaking time having the highest contribution ratio of 69.41%

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