Optimization of Powder Segregation Occurring in Metal Injection Molding of Stainless Steels: Development of a Numerical Optimization Methodology based on Design of Experiments and Response Surface Modeling

摘要

Powder segregation arising in metal injection molding corresponds to a localized variation of powder volume fraction arising during injection molding. In order to reduce this defect, an optimization method is proposed, consisting in three main stages. The first one consists to use a design of experiments to select the most sensitive process and material parameters. Then, the Response Surface Method, combined with Moving Least Square approximation provide an efficient tool, in combination with a Genetic Algorithm, to get the minimum of the cost function. In order to improve the optimization procedure and to accurately localize the optimum, an adaptive Moving Least Square approximation is also proposed. The proposed approach has been applied in different cases and the efficiency has been proved.