Experimental Design and Performance Analysis in Plasma Arc Surface Hardening

In this paper, the experimental design by using the Taguchi method was employed to optimize the processing parameters in the plasma arc surface hardening process. The evaluated processing parameters are arc current, scanning velocity and carbon content of steel. In addition, the significant effects of the relation between processing parameters were also investigated. An orthogonal array, signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed to investigate the effects of these processing parameters. Through this study, not only the increasing in hardened depth and improvement in surface roughness, but the parameters that significantly affect on the hardening performance were also identified. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of this approach. Dalam kertas kerja ini, reka bentuk ujikaji menggunakan kaedah Taguchi digunakan untuk mengoptimumkan parameter pemprosesan dalam proses arka plasma pengerasan permukaan. Parameter pemprosesan yang dinilai adalah arus arka, halaju imbasan dan kandungan karbon dalam keluli. Sebagai tambahan, kesan-kesan penting yang lain seperti hubungan di antara parameter pemprosesan juga diselidiki. Tatasusunan ortogon, nisbah signal to noise (S/N) dan analisis varians (ANOVA) digunakan untuk mengkaji kesan parameter pemprosesan ini. Melalui kajian ini, bukan sahaja kedalaman pengerasan bertambah dan kekasaran permukaan lebih baik, malah parameter pemprosesan yang nyata sekali menpengaruhi prestasi pengerasan dikenal pasti. Hasil percubaan mengesahkan keberkesanan pendekatan ini.