Original Research Article Effect of process parameters on mechanical properties of hollow glass microsphere reinforced magnesium alloy syntactic foams under vacuum die casting G. Anbuchezhiyan a , T. Muthuramalingam b, * , B. Mohan c a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Valliammai Engineering College, Kattankulathur, Kancheepuram District, Tamilnadu 603203, India b Department of Mechatronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur Campus, Kancheepuram District, Tamilnadu 603203, India c Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, CEG Campus, Chennai, Tamilnadu 600025, India 1. Introduction Low density materials with high specific strength are signifi- cant for marine industry providing buoyancy for subsea apparatus such as submersible vehicles and oceanographic equipments. The syntactic foam is synthesized by introducing a light weight material as reinforcement in a matrix alloy. Gupta et al. (2010) studied about the need and synthesize of closed cell syntactic foam by dispersing rigid hollow particles in a metal matrix material. Since the hollow microspheres or the gas-containing particles are filled mechanically into the a r c h i v e s o f c i v i l a n d m e c h a n i c a l e n g i n e e r i n g 1 8 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 1 6 4 5 – 1 6 5 0 a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 20 June 2018 Accepted 30 July 2018 Available online Keywords: Syntactic foams Vacuum casting Magnesium HGM Optimization a b s t r a c t In the present study, an endeavour has been made to investigate the mechanical properties of hollow glass microspheres reinforced die cast magnesium alloy under vacuum die casting process. The particle size, mass fraction, stirring speed has been considered as input process parameters to analyze the mechanical properties such as hardness, compressive strength, porosity and density of the syntactic foams. Taguchi-Grey relational based multi response optimization has been utilized to compute the optimal process parameters and find the influence of those parameters on performance measures of casting process. From the experimental investigation, the optimal process parameters have been found as particle size (45 microns), mass fraction (20%) and stirring speed (600 rpm) among the chosen process parameters. The highest max–min indicates the particle size has higher influence on determining the mechanical properties of the syntactic foam owing to its importance on determining the porosity. It has been also observed that the density of syntactic foam decreases with increases in the mass percentage of hollow glass microspheres. © 2018 Politechnika Wroclawska. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: tsgaaa1981@gmail.com (G. Anbuchezhiyan), muthu1060@gmail.com (T. Muthuramalingam), mohan@mitindia.edu (B. Mohan). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/acme https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acme.2018.07.008 1644-9665/© 2018 Politechnika Wroclawska. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.