Linear and Non-linear Modeling of Cement-bonded Moulding Sand System Using Conventional Statistical Regression Analysis

摘要

A cement-bonded moulding sand system takes a fairly long time to attain the required strength. Hence, the moulds prepared with cement as a bonding material will have to wait a long time for the metal to be poured. In this work, an accelerator was used to accelerate the process of developing the bonding strength. Regression analysis was carried out on the experimental data collected as per statistical design of experiments (DOE) to establish input-output relationships of the process. The experiments were conducted to measure compression strength and hardness (output parameters) by varying the input variables, namely amount of cement, amount of accelerator, water in the form of cement-to-water ratio, and testing time. A two-level full-factorial design was used for linear regression model, whereas a three-level central composite design (CCD) had been utilized to develop non-linear regression model. Surface plots and main effects plots were used to study the effects of amount of cement, amount of accelerator, water and testing time on compression strength, and mould hardness. It was observed from both the linear as well as non-linear models that amount of cement, accelerator, and testing time have some positive contributions, whereas cement-to-water ratio has negative contribution to both the above responses. Compression strength was found to have linear relationship with the amount of cement and accelerator, and non-linear relationship with the remaining process parameters. Mould hardness was seen to vary linearly with testing time and non-linearly with the other parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test statistical adequacy of the models. Twenty random test cases were considered to test and compare their performances. Non-linear regression models were found to perform better than the linear models for both the responses. An attempt was also made to express compression strength of the moulding sand system as a function of mould hardness.