OPTIOMIZATION OF PROCESS PARAMETERS AND STUDY OF WEAR DURING HARD FACING OF MILD STEEL USING TAGUCHI METHOD

Hard facing is an important tool in tribology in which a layer of wear resistant material deposited over base metal or substrate to improve surface characteristics. There are numerous processes and consumables available in the market to improve the surface characteristics of components. This technique has potential to deposit hard-faced layer on substrate. The properties usually sought are greater resistance to wear from abrasion, impact, adhesion (metal-tometal), heat, corrosion or any combination of these factors. Hard facing is applied only to specific areas of metal parts that are exposed to wear. There is often no need to protect the entire surface of a component from wear. Hard facing can be applied selectively and in different thickness to suit the exact requirements of a piece of equipment, thereby proving a most economical way of combating wear Shielded metal arc welding is most commonly used process for hard facing due to its easy availability and versatility of operation. Low carbon steel is selected for the present work as substrate material due to its low cost, easy availability and variety of applications. In the present work a detailed study was done to study the effect of different level of current and different layer of hard facing electrode on mild steel, deposited by SMAW. Minitab software was used to determine the no. experiments to be performed with different factors at different levels. A total of Eight experiments were performed according to the combinations given by the software. test were carried out on the above samples like wear test, bead geometry to record the observations. Optimization of the parameters was done with Taguchi Method and wear rate among the eight sample in study. It was observed that with an increase in number of layer there is the wear resistance is also improved.