Study of the Effect of Nano-silica Particles on Resin-Bonded Moulding Sand Properties and Quality of Casting

The cast quality in chemical bonded sand mould system is influenced primarily by sand mould properties such as, compression strength, permeability, gas evolution, and collapsibility. Amount of resin and hardener, curing time and number of strokes influence the sand mould properties. The experiments are conducted with the above mentioned input output, as per Taguchi’s L₉ orthogonal array. Pareto analysis of variance is conducted to determine the percent contribution of inputs on output, individually. The optimal factor level is determined for each output separately. The conflicting requirements in foundry sand mould properties can be solved by multiple objective optimization. Principal component analysis is applied to determine the relative importance of individual output. Grey relational analysis is used to convert multiple objective functions to a single objective function for optimization task. Pareto analysis is utilized to determine the optimal input factor combination and their relative percent contribution towards moulding sand properties. The nano-silica particles are used as additive to enhance the moulding sand properties. The results have shown that, the nano-silica particles pose a remarkable improvement in sand mould properties and casting quality.