Application of taguchi experiment design to reduce lignin contents of rice straw

The Taguchi experimental design is an experimental design to get the quality of an object by providing the best design at the procurement stage. In this case, the Taguchi design was applied to reduce the contents of lignin from rice straw, where lignin is one of the rice straw components that useless which must be reduced or eliminated. Rice straw is composed of lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose. The existence of lignin components that become a protective wall will inhibit the activity of cellulose, and hemicellulose for further processing to produce some fermented products such as bio-gas, bio-ethanol, bio-plastics, and others. The process of decreasing lignin content from rice straw is done in ozonolysis. In this study, Taguchi's experimental design analysis was using the application of MINITAB 14 which used for statistical calculation and create a level setting in a tabular form of arrays called orthogonal arrays. The orthogonal array matrix used is L9 (33 ) which states that the process was conducted 9 times with variations of 3 factors and 3 levels. The factors that influence the decrease in lignin levels include sample size, ozone flow rate, and contact time. The results showed that the smallest lignin content was carried out at 80 mesh sample size, the ozone flow rate of 3 L / Min, and contact time for 10 minutes.

Modelling Porosity Permeability of Ceramic Tiles using Fuzzy Taguchi Method

Taguchi experiment design in quality development studies, is an approach to engineering that supports research and development, product design and product development activities by enabling fewer trials of experiments to determine the best combinations of inputs that affect the outcome. In this study, the factors affecting the porosity were studied in a firm that produces ceramic tile. There were 6 factors considered to be important in total and 2 levels in each factor. L8 orthogonal array were used during the experiment design, which proposes 8 experiment types with different factor levels. The results of the experiments were analyzed so that important factors were determined. Significance of factors were tested by ANOVA and 4 of them were found to be significant. These factors were fuzzified by assessing the factors using linguistic expressions and then triangular fuzzy numbers. A model with 4 inputs and 1 output was built and 34 rules were generated for this model. The developed model was shown to be a useful approach in modeling the porosity permeability of ceramic tiles.

Determining Effects of Wagon Mass and Vehicle Velocity on Vertical Vibrations of a Rail Vehicle Moving with a Constant Acceleration on a Bridge Using Experimental and Numerical Methods

Vibrations are vital for derailment safety and passenger comfort which may occur on rail vehicles due to the truck and nearby conditions. In particular, while traversing a bridge, dynamic interaction forces due to moving loads increase the vibrations even further. In this study, the vertical vibrations of a rail vehicle at the midpoint of a bridge, where the amount of deflection is expected to be maximum, were determined by means of a 1 : 5 scaled roller rig and Newmark-βnumerical method. Simulations for different wagon masses and vehicle velocities were performed using both techniques. The results obtained from the numerical and experimental methods were compared and it was demonstrated that the former was accurate with an 8.9% error margin. Numerical simulations were performed by identifying different test combinations with Taguchi experiment design. After evaluating the obtained results by means of an ANOVA analysis, it was determined that the wagon mass had a decreasing effect on the vertical vibrations of the rail vehicle by 2.087%, while rail vehicle velocity had an increasing effect on the vibrations by 96.384%.