Characterization and optimisation of physical/mechanical properties of aluminium/alumina/sugarcane‐bagasse‐powder composites using Taguchi technique

Abstract Burnt sugarcane bagasse powder (SCBP), with its low density, accessibility, and renewal, is an economically reinforcing material. This study fabricated composites, i. e., aluminium/alumina/burnt sugarcane bagasse powder, through the powder metallurgy route. The physical, mechanical, microscopic, and chemical characterization of the composites, such as relative density, microhardness, uniaxial compression, scanning electron microscopy, and x‐ray diffraction, has been conducted. There is a gain in relative density, microhardness and ultimate compression strength of about 2.25 %, 48.07 % and 33.34 % respectively, compared to the base composite (aluminium/4 wt.‐% alumina) at 3 wt.‐% burnt sugarcane bagasse powder. The Taguchi methodology is used as a statistical tool to optimise the response variables. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to find the contribution of input parameters to response variables, and the regression models have been developed. The contribution of factors ‘burnt sugarcane bagasse powder wt.‐%’ and ‘time’ on relative density is 81.65 % and 13.64 %, respectively, while the contribution of the same factors on microhardness is 95.98 % and 3.377 %, respectively. The results of the Taguchi method reveal that the optimised conditions for the highest relative density and microhardness are 3 wt.‐% burnt sugarcane bagasse powder and 2.5 h, which have confirmed the experimental results.