Investigation of surface roughness and MRR in drilling of Al₂O₃ particle and sisal fibre reinforced epoxy composites using TOPSIS based Taguchi method

In this article, the surface roughness (SR) and material removal rate (MRR) in drilling of Al₂O₃ particle and sisal fibre/epoxy composites was investigated. The hand layup technique was employed to develop the epoxy/sisal fibre/Al₂O₃ composites. The drilling parameters such as cutting speed, feed rate and diameter of drill bit were considered to perform drilling operation. The drilling experiments were designed based on L₉ orthogonal array suggested by Taguchi technique. The single response optimization of SR and MRR was conducted by Taguchi technique. The influence of significant parameters on SR and MRR was identified by analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of single response optimization revealed that the cutting speed is the most influencing parameters for both SR and MRR followed by the feed rate and diameter of drill bit. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach was employed for multi-response optimization. From the results, it is observed that cutting speed is the most significant parameter on minimizing SR and maximizing MRR followed by feed rate and diameter of drill bit. (paper)