Investigation of GFRP Gear Accuracy and Surface Roughness Using Taguchi and Grey Relational Analysis

Abstract

Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite gear is used in a number of applications where fine motion transmission and silent rotation is required. In order to increase its usage there is a need to increase the quality of gear. Shrinkage problem is associated with injection molded gear. In present case blank is prepared by injection molding and teeth are cut on gear shaper by which metrology can be controlled by optimizing the machining parameters. An analysis of variance was applied on 27 experiments to validate the process and found out that rotary feed is at rank 1 which is 0.15[Formula: see text]mm/stroke, cutting fluid ratio is at rank 2 which is 12%, cutting speed is at rank 3 which is 240 stroke/min, fluid flow rate is at rank 4 which is 30 ml/min. By using these parameters optimum performance obtained is 0.213[Formula: see text]mm root diameter deviation (RD), 0.165[Formula: see text]mm tooth thickness variation (TT) and 1[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m roughness average (Ra) with grey relational grade of 0.8318. The optimum response provided the best value of RD, TT and Ra for the range included in experimental results which is 0.138 to 0.416[Formula: see text]mm, 0.012 to 0.187[Formula: see text]mm and 1.2 to 2.43[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m respectively. Surface roughness improvement in this work is 49.8% higher as compared to result available in literature.