Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Composites Volume 2013, Article ID 274527, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/274527 Research Article Tribological Performance Optimization of Al-7.5% SiCp Composites Using the Taguchi Method and Grey Relational Analysis Shouvik Ghosh, Prasanta Sahoo, and Goutam Sutradhar Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India Correspondence should be addressed to Prasanta Sahoo; psjume@gmail.com Received 11 May 2013; Accepted 7 August 2013 Academic Editor: Masamichi Kawai Copyright © 2013 Shouvik Ghosh et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. he present study considers an experimental study of tribological performance of Al-7.5% SiCp metal matrix composite and optimization of tribological testing parameters based on the Taguchi method coupled with grey relational analysis. A grey relational grade obtained from grey relational analysis is used as a performance index to study the behaviour of Al-7.5% SiCp MMC with respect to friction and wear characteristics. he tribological experiments are carried out by utilizing the combinations of tribological test parameters based on the L 27 Taguchi orthogonal design with three test parameters, namely, load, speed, and time. he material Al-7.5% SiCp metal matrix composite is developed by reinforcing LM6 aluminium alloy with 7.5% (by weight) SiC particle of 400 mesh size (∼37 m) in an electric melting furnace. It is observed that sliding time has a signiicant contribution in controlling the friction and wear behaviour of Al-7.5% SiCp MMC. Furthermore, all the interactions between the parameters have signiicant inluence on tribological performance. A conirmation test is also carried out to verify the accuracy of the results obtained through the optimization problem. In addition, a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) test is performed on the wear tracks to study the wear mechanism. 1. Introduction In recent years, metal matrix composites have gained pop- ularity for use in industrial applications. he metal matrix composites have become increasingly desirable to engineers, largely due to improved toughness, strength, and stifness properties ofered by these materials relative to the unrein- forced base metals. Mostly light metals such as aluminium, magnesium, and their alloys have received the commercial recognition due to their relatively low cost and easy process- ing. Arguably, aluminium based composites have shown per- formance improvements in a variety of applications requiring high strength, low mass, and tailored thermal properties. In the past years, many researchers have studied the friction and wear behaviour of Al based composites. Mostly, researchers have studied the friction and wear behaviour for sliding contact [1–6]. Some of the researchers have studied the abrasive wear behaviour for the same [7–12]. he efect of heat treatment [13, 14] and temperature change [15] is also studied by some researchers. Ma et al. [1] conducted wear test with block-on-ring con- iguration for Al-20% SiCp (particulate) and Al-50% SiCp. From the tests, they reported that wear increases with the increase in load and sliding speed, while wear decreases with the increase in SiC incorporation. It was also observed that at loads of above 100 N and at sliding speed of 6 m/s severe wear took place. Yalcin and Akbulut [2] observed that wear rate varies inversely with reinforcement volume fraction. Sharma et al. [3] conducted the dry wear test for SiC reinforcement 0– 5 volume fraction range and observed that wear rates decrease with increase in volume fraction of the reinforcement. Ghosh et al. [4] studied the friction behaviour of Al-5% SiC MMC and concluded that applied load and sliding speed are the most signiicant parameters afecting the friction behaviour of the material. Another similar study was conducted by Ghosh et al. [5] on the friction behaviour of Al-10% SiC MMC. Onat [6] studied the dry sliding wear properties of SiCp reinforced Al-Cu composite and concluded that with increase in applied load and sliding speed, the wear rates