FABRICATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF NATURAL FIBER COMPOSITES USING COMPRESSION MOLDING BY TAGUCHI GREY RELATIONAL METHODS

This study investigates the utilization of Taguchi Design of Experiments paired with Autodesk Mold flowanalysis to ascertain the optimal processing conditions for creating natural Composite structures made offibers and polymers. The composite matrix evaluated consists of recycled plastic reinforced by 10% wood fiber.Optimization efforts focused on four pivotal variables: compression time, mold temperature, melt temperature,and applied pressure. By leveraging an L9 orthogonal array, the process was evaluated in Mold flow throughdistinct parameter combinations. Simulation-derived war page data were transformed into signal-to-noise (S/N)ratios, and the optimal setting for each factor was isolated using the smaller-the-better performance metric.Analytical results pointed to a specific set of optimal conditions: a mold temperature of 60 °C, compression timeof 40 s, melt temperature of 210 °C, and pressure of 600 kn. A confirmatory experiment was conducted to verifythe efficacy of these settings. Furthermore, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that melt temperature wasthe most influential factor regarding war page, followed in importance by mold temperature, compression,pressure."