Casting process optimization for reducing the cold shut defect in castings using response surface methodology

Foundry industry suffers from poor quality castings due to large number of process parameters involved. The objective of this work is to analyze the cold shut defect occurring in pump jet body castings. The pump jet body castings are produced using gray cast iron of FG200 grade. The pouring temperature, pouring time and phosphorous content of the metal are identified as important parameters. Response surface methodology is chosen to optimize the response variable. Box-Behnken design is adopted in this study and the process parameters are optimized using design expert software. The optimized values are adopted in confirmation experiments. It is observed that the optimized settings reduced the rejection percentage from 27.64% to 2.50%.