APPLICATION OF TAGUCHI APPROACH IN THE OPTIMIZATION OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF SNAIL-SHELL-FILLER/CHICKEN-FEATHER-FIBRE POLYMER BASED HYBRID COMPOSITE

Many studies are on-going to optimize the properties of composites, this is because composite have found application in different industries due to their advantage of light weight. Scientists have turned their attention to using natural occurring materials for the development of novel materials. Animal waste is playing an important part in this area of application as using it is not only providing benign environmental solution but solving engineering challenges. In this study, the effect of three factors on the mechanical properties of the composite was studied. They are snail shell particulate size (SSPS), volume of snail shell filler (SSF) and chicken feather fibre (CFF) respectively. The composite were produced from four different SSPS (75, 150, 300 and 600µm), % reinforcements of SSF (2.5%, 5.0%, 7.5% and 10%) and CFF (10%, 20%, 30% and 40%) respectively. The snail shell particulate and chicken feather fibre of varying % composition were imbedded in the matrix of polyester resin. The experiments were conducted using Taguchi method L16 (4x3) with three design parameter SSPS, SSF and CFF at four level combinations. A total of sixteen runs of experiment were performed and the experimental data analysed using Taguchi optimization method with Minitab 18.1 software. ANOVA was used to statistically analyse and optimized the data and the significant influence of each parameter on the mechanical properties of the composite. Analysis were done at 95% confidence level and it was observed that CFF has 69.46%, 66.64%, 37.88% and 42.93% significant effect on UTS, Load, MOR and Impact strength respectively, while SSF and SPSS have 40.69% and 46.74% significant effect on MOE and Hardness value respectively. A verification test confirmed there were improvements in the S/N ratios for all properties from the mean values to the experimental values except for Load.