Improvement of Strain at Fracture and Porosity Levels in Magnesium Die Castings Using the Taguchi Design of Experiments and Analysis

Optimization of process parameters is critical to minimize the porosity, as well as to maximize the strain at fracture performance of die cast components. In this paper, a two step design of experiments, derived from the Taguchi method, was used to determine the optimum parameter settings for AM60B magnesium die casting alloy.

From result analysis, metal temperature and intermediate shot velocity are the most influential parameters for porosity, whereas cavity fill time is the most influential parameter for strain at fracture. Finally, unlike strain at fracture models which are not reproducible, the porosity models are reproducible for both stages of the experiments.