Experimental Investigation and Process Parameter Optimization of Al Hybrid Composite Material Processed by WEDM using Taguchi

Advancement of technology and numerous research work leads to the adoption of Composite material in the various sectors, like Aerospace, Automobile and Medical fields. In this research, Stir casting technique was utilized for fabricating the Hybrid Metal Matrix Composite (HMMC). Aluminium (Al6061) is used as a matrix material and the reinforcement used are Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Boron Carbide (B4C) with different weight percentages (Sic – 5, 10 and 15 percentage & B4C – 5 percentage). These fabricated composites are machined by using the Wire Cut Electrical Discharge Machine (WEDM), through which, Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Surface Roughness (Ra) has been calculated for all samples. Taguchi technique has been adopted to analyze influence of process parameters (Feed Rate, Current, Pulse on Time and Pulse off Time) and the different volumetric fraction of the reinforcement on MRR and Ra. From the developed model, it is clear that the increasing of reinforcement in the composite material had a positive impact over the MRR and Ra up to a certain extent, and later it degraded. Taguchi Optimization technique is adopted to predict the behaviors of the process parameters, and the Regression Equation was calculated for each sample to determine the MRR and Ra.