Performance Studies of Induction-Hardened Parts Using Robust Design

Heat treatment of automobile parts and drive shafts using induction hardening is becoming increasingly popular in manufacturing industry. It is primarily due to the fact that even highly skilled workers cannot ensure accuracy and consistency in the manufactured parts. Induction Hardening is a form of heat treatment in which a metal part is heated by induction heating and then quenched.The literature survey has revealed a little research has been conducted to obtain the optimum levels of process parameters in the induction hardening of materials like AISI 1040 steel. The AISI 1040 material is used extensively for making drive shafts.In this work, an effort has been made to investigate the effect of change of input parameters viz feed rate, dwell time, current, and gap between the induction coil and work-piece, on responses like hardness, total case depth, mean effective case depth and wear rate at three different conditions (as-rolled, normalized and hardened tempered) in induction hardening process in order to obtain the optimal sets of the process parameters so that the quality features of induction hardened parts can be optimized.