Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Dubai, UAE, March 10-12, 2020
© IEOM Society International
Application of Tagushi Design in Quality Improvement for
Construction Industry
Ziout, A., Jaber Abu Qudeiri , Mohammed AlAjouz, Osama Bassam, Hana Abusabiekeh
Department of Mechanical Engineering
United Arab Emirates University
AlAin, AbuDhabi, UAE
Ziout@uaeu.ac.ae
Abstract
This study aims to utilize Tagushi design in quality improvement for construction industry. A comparison
between full factorial and Tagushi design is conducted experimentally. The experiment investigates the
effect of four major factors and their interactions on concrete compression strength. The factors are;
percentage of recycled aggregates, percentage of dune sand, amount of steel fiber in concrete mixture and
test time. Two types of design of experiments (DOE) have been done to test different concrete mixtures by
using different combinations of the mentioned four factors. The collected data has been studied using full
factorial and Taguchi “Robust” designs. Also, Minitab software results have been obtained and analyzed.
Based on full factorial design, it was found that all factors were significant, whereas the interactions
between factors were significant only for two-way interaction. The three-way and four-way interactions
were insignificant. On the other hand, Taguchi analysis was used to determine the main effects of factors.
The results of both full factorial and Taguchi methods were the same except for the percentage of dune
sand. In the full factorial method, when combining both types of sand, the compressive strength of concrete
increased. In contrast, Taguchi showed opposites results.
Keywords
Design of Experiments, Full factorial, Taguchi design, construction industry
Introduction and Literature review
Concrete is the main building material that is widely used in all kinds of civil engineering works like substructure,
infrastructure, buildings, installations of defense work, environs defense and local-domestic improvements. Basically,
concrete is made by three basic components which are water, natural aggregates, such as sand, rocks or gravel, and
Portland cement. Recently, the perception of the continued extensive abstraction and use of natural resources
aggregates is questioned at a worldwide level (Lawson et al, 2001). In order to overcome this problem and decrease
the rapid consumption of natural aggregates, concrete debris, resulted from demolition works, are being recycled and
used in concrete productions. Recycled concrete aggregate lessens impact on landfills, reduces energy depletion and
provides cost reserves (Huang et al, 2002).
Yehia et al. (2015) studied the concrete properties produced with 100% replacement of recycled aggregates (RA). The
test results showed that compressive, strength of the 100% RA concrete could be achieved with high packing density
of concrete” high compaction”.Zhou and Chen (2017) studied the effect of two different types of recycled aggregate
in the mechanical properties of concrete. The results showed different mechanical properties for various types of
recycled aggregates. RPA had lower water absorption and density than RCRA. Therefore, RPA concrete had high
compressive strength than RCRA. The compressive strength of recycled aggregate concrete was similar and
sometimes higher than that of normal aggregate concrete. The authors referred this result due to high absorption of
recycled which lead to higher bonding strength between cement and aggregate. M. Baena et al. (2016) studied the
effect of recycled aggregate on concrete mix. Test results showed C20 compressive strength decreased regardless of
the percentage replacement of recycled aggregate due to different in water-cement ratio. C30 for 50% and less
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