Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
DOI 10.1007/s00170-012-4591-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Multi-characteristic optimization of wax patterns
in the investment casting process using grey–fuzzy logic
Sarojrani Pattnaik & D. B. Karunakar & P. K. Jha
Received: 8 January 2012 / Accepted: 29 October 2012 / Published online: 5 December 2012
# Springer-Verlag London 2012
Abstract The present investigation focuses on optimizing the
injection process parameters with multiple performance char-
acteristics in the investment casting process using the orthog-
onal array with grey–fuzzy logics. A grey–fuzzy reasoning
grade obtained from the grey–fuzzy logics analysis is used as
a performance index to determine the optimal injection process
parameters. The selected injection process parameters are in-
jection temperature, injection time, and injection pressure,
while the considered performance characteristics are linear
shrinkage and surface finish. The response table, response
graph, and analysis of variance are used to find the optimal
setting and the influence of injection process parameters on the
multiple performance characteristics. The results of confirma-
tion experiments reveal that grey–fuzzy logics can effectively
acquire an optimal combination of the process parameters.
Hence, quality of wax patterns in the investment casting pro-
cess can be significantly improved through this approach.
Keywords Grey–fuzzy logic . Optimization . Linear
shrinkage . Surface finish . Wax patterns
1 Introduction
Investment casting (IC) is used for producing high-quality,
net-shape complex parts [1]. There are no metallurgical
limitations for investment casting. Difficult to machine met-
als are best shaped by this process. Excellent surface finish
is a major advantage of this process. The largest applications
of investment casting are in the aircraft and aerospace in-
dustries, especially turbine blades and vanes cast in cobalt
and nickel-base superalloys as well as structural components
S. Pattnaik (*) : D. B. Karunakar : P. K. Jha
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department,
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,
Roorkee, Uttarakhand 247667, India
e-mail: rani_saroj7@yahoo.co.in
cast in superalloys, titanium, and 17-4-PH stainless steel.
The major steps involved in the IC process are shown in
Fig. 1. These steps are as follows: injection molding of a
wax pattern, ceramic shell building, dewaxing, drying, met-
al casting, knocking out of the ceramic shell and cutting off
the individual components, followed by minor finishing
operations, and then finally inspection of the parts. Each
step produces a certain effect on the final part dimensions.
Waxes are commonly used as pattern materials [2]. The
desirable properties in a good wax pattern include low ash
content (up to 0.05 %), resistance to the primary coat mate-
rial as investment, high tensile strength and hardness, good
wettability, resistance to oxidation, low shrinkage, low vis-
cosity, low melting point, fast setting rate, easy reclaimabil-
ity, and non-hazardous to health. Costs, availability, ease of
recycling, toxicity, and resistance to binders or solvents are
the other important factors in selecting a pattern wax.
The working efficiency of IC process can be increased by
improving one or more characteristics of the pattern wax,
mentioned above, without spoiling the others. The various
waxes used in the IC process are of animal type, vegetable
type, petroleum type, mineral type, and synthetic type. But
many researchers have found that the blends containing only
waxes lack the following two properties [3]: (1) strength and
rigidity; (2) dimensional control, with regards to surface cav-
itations resulting from solidification shrinkage during and after
pattern injection. So they need to be modified in terms of their
properties through the addition of some materials called addi-
tives and fillers [4]. Tascioglu and Akar [5] added various
additives to a low-cost sprue wax (B97) with inferior properties
and studied that by adding these additives to the sprue wax, the
surface roughness, solidification, shrinkage, viscosity, hard-
ness, tensile strength, and wettability properties can be im-
proved to such an extent that it has properties superior to that
of a commercial investment casting pattern wax (B140).
Though, the composition of the wax blend affects the
quality of the wax pattern, yet there are some other factors
1578
Pattern production Pattern assembly Investment
Dewaxing Casting Knockout
Cut-off Finish and inspect
Fig. 1 Basic steps involved in the IC process
such as the geometry of the cast part and injection process
parameters such as injection temperature, injection pressure,
injection flow rate, die temperature, etc., which are also crucial
in making a good wax pattern [6]. Injection of wax may be in a
solid state or in a liquid state. Solid injection is done to avoid
shrinkage and for improving the strength of the wax pattern,
but it requires much higher pressures. Liquid injection into the
dies under gravity leads to more shrinkage, thus affecting the
size of the pattern. Rezavand and Behravesh [7] studied the
effect of wax injection process parameters on the final dimen-
sions and stability of the wax pattern produced of a turbine
blade in relation to the critical blade geometry. It was found
from their study that in the injection step, the final dimensions
of wax pattern were affected by the type of wax used, geom-
etry of the pattern to be produced, and injection process
parameters chosen. Horacek [8] found that the injection
parameters play an important role in the accuracy of the wax
patterns and the parameters considered were: the injection
flow rate, the injection cycle time, the injection temperature,
the injection pressure, and the die temperature. Literature
available indicates that a large number of input process param-
eters are involved in making qualitative wax patterns [9, 10].
Hence, it is essential to understand the relationship among the
various controllable process parameters and then the impor-
tant parameters have to be identified which influences the
quality of the wax patterns. The selection of appropriate
injection process parameters for making qualitative wax pat-
terns is one of the primary challenges in the technology of the
IC process. The setting of appropriate injection process
parameters with considerations of multiple performance char-
acteristics is greatly difficult and complicated, and relies on
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
huge amount of experimental operations. Therefore, it is crit-
ically important to effectively acquire the optimal process
parameters and to adjust factors for achieving optimal
responses and to decrease the trail-and-error time and con-
suming cost in the manufacturing process.
Taguchi method has been extensively used in engineering
design and the analysis of optimal manufacture [11]. The
original Taguchi method is designed to optimize a single
performance characteristic [12, 13]. However, this method
has shown some defects in dealing with the problems of
multiple performance characteristics [14, 15]. The grey re-
lational analysis initialized by Deng [16] has been proven to
be very useful technique in dealing with poor, incomplete,
and partial known data [17]. It is adopted for solving the
complicated interrelationships among the multiple objec-
tives in various fields of manufacturing [18, 19]. The theory
of fuzzy logic originated by Zadeh [20] has been proven to
be useful for dealing with uncertain and vague information.
Hence, the grey relational analysis may be further improved
with the implementation of fuzzy logic theory in the multi-
variate system to obtain better system performance [21, 22].
The grey-based fuzzy logic combines the advantage of both
the methods. In the past, researchers [23–25] have used
grey-based fuzzy logic for process optimization to solve
multi-response optimization problems, and it led to great
improvement in the process in terms of performance char-
acteristics. The objectives in grey method such as lower-the-
better, higher-the-better, and nominal-the-better contain cer-
tain degree of uncertainty and vagueness which is overcome
by fuzzy logic. This method was successfully applied to
optimize multiple objectives of complicated problems in
side milling [26], injection-molded part with a thin shell
feature [27], in CNC turning process [28], etc., but rarely
applied to investment casting process. There is no published
work till now, which involves the issue of integrating grey
relational analysis with fuzzy logic to optimize the injection
process parameters of the wax patterns in the IC process.
The main objective of this study is to employ grey
relational analysis and fuzzy logic to establish the optimal
setting of injection process parameters for making wax
patterns in the IC process. The injection process parameters
considered in the present study are: injection temperature,
injection time, and injection pressure. The linear shrinkage
and surface roughness of the wax patterns are considered as
performance evaluation parameters for predicting the qual-
ity of the wax patterns. The response table and response
graph are used to determine the optimum injection process
parameters in the IC process. Furthermore, analysis of var-
iance (ANOVA) is used to find out the most influential
injection process parameter that contributes to a high-
quality product. It is found that the proposed method can
greatly reduce the effort of the optimization procedure.
Also, the results of the confirmation experiments reveal that
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
the obtained optimal combination of the injection process
parameters can effectively improve both linear shrinkage
and surface roughness of the wax patterns.
2 Experimental methodologies
2.1 Composition of wax blend for pattern production
The investment casting wax patterns should have better
dimensional accuracy and excellent surface finish. The lit-
erature reveals that the blend containing only waxes are
unable to fulfill the criteria of a good pattern wax. The
present study involves the use of the blend consisting of
waxes such as paraffin wax, carnauba wax, microcrystalline
wax, and polyethylene wax with starch as filler material.
Selection of waxes was purely on the basis of their
properties suitable for pattern production. The petroleum
waxes used were paraffin wax and microcrystalline wax.
Paraffin is the most commonly used wax because it is less
expensive compared to other waxes. It also controls or
enhances the rheological properties, which in turn affects
the injection temperature and fluidity of the pattern wax.
Microcrystalline wax is tougher, more flexible, and has
higher tensile strength and melting point than paraffin
wax. It was found by experimentation that the blend of
paraffin and microcrystalline wax provided cohesiveness
to the pattern wax. Natural waxes affect the hardness, sur-
face finish, and setup properties of the wax blend, and
carnauba wax is known as the hardest natural wax. So, it
was also added to the wax blend containing paraffin and
microcrystalline wax. Polyethylene wax, a kind of synthetic
wax, has good dispersion and fluidity, excellent releasability
from the mold, high flexural strength, and provides high-
dimensional accuracy. Hence, polyethylene wax was also
selected for making the blend. The fillers are primarily used
to improve the shrinkage characteristics of wax blends. It
also helps to improve the overall structural strength of the
blend. However, the filler should be sufficiently wettable
with the wax and leave no ash content when burnt. Hence, in
this study, starch was used as filler material as it was
surfacially compatible with the wax. Each of the above-
selected ingredients has some attributes required for making
an ideal wax blend. But the percentage of each of the
ingredients to be added to get the best results was not
known. In order to determine the best pattern wax compo-
sition, first, three different wax blends were prepared by
varying the ingredients in proportion as shown in Table 1.
All these chemicals were melted in a steel container with
constant agitation in order to get homogenous melt. A
vacuum wax injection machine was used to inject the vis-
cous wax at constant injection process parameters, and
cylindrical wax patterns with fins were made from silicon
1579
Table 1 Proportions of the wax blends (percentage by weight)
Blend Paraffin Carnauba Microcrystalline Polyethylene Starch
wax wax wax wax
I 40 10 30 4 16
II 30 10 30 10 20
III 25 5 35 12 23
rubber mold as shown in Fig. 2. From each of the blends,
three wax patterns were produced, and linear shrinkage and
surface roughness of the corresponding wax patterns were
measured by means of digital vernier calipers and scanning
probe microscope, respectively. It was found that the blend
III had least linear shrinkage (2.84 %) and best surface finish
(58.5907 nm) as compared to other blends. Figure 3 shows
the two-dimensional plot of surface roughness of the blend
III. The melting point of the blend III was found to be
64 °C as shown in Fig. 4. Hence, further experiments
were carried out using blend III by varying the injection
process parameters each time to determine the optimum
process parameters.
2.2 Selection of process parameter levels
The following injection process parameters were selected:
injection temperature (A), injection time (B), and injection
pressure (C). The other parameters such as wax composi-
tion, ambient temperature, pattern cooling inside the mold
and after ejection from the mold were kept constant during
the entire investigation. The selection of parameters of in-
terest was based on some preliminary experiments con-
ducted by the authors and available literature [29]. The
range of the selected process parameters were decided by
conducting the experiments with one variable at a time
approach. The process parameters, their designed symbols,
and range are furnished in Table 2.
Fig. 2 Silicon rubber mold
1580 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587

not filled completely at one stroke when the injection time

was less than 40 s, and when it was more than 50 s, it led to
the overflow of liquid wax out of the mold. The injection
pressure was selected in the range of 0.5 to 0.7 kg/cm2. In
this range, the wax shrinkage was found to be minimum.

2.3 Selection of orthogonal array

From Table 2, it is clear that there are three factors and

Fig. 3 Two-dimensional plot of surface roughness of the blend III
The range of injection temperature between 70 and 80 °C
was selected on the basis of preliminary experiments con-
ducted in the laboratory. The results revealed that the fluid-
ity of the wax was not good at temperatures below 70 °C for
the wax blend used in the experimentation leading to in-
complete filling of the mold cavity and injection of the wax
at temperatures above 80 °C resulted in more wax pattern
shrinkage. The range of injection time between 40 and 50 s
was selected because it was found that the mold cavity was
three levels used in the experiment. If three levels were
assigned to each of these factors and a factorial exper-
imental design was employed using each of these val-
ues, the number of permutations would be very large.
As per Taguchi’s method, the total degree of freedom
(DOF) of selected orthogonal array must be greater than
or equal to the total DOF required for the experiment.
Each three level parameter has 2 degrees of freedom,
which is defined as (number of level 1). Hence, the
total DOF required for three parameters, each at three
levels, is [3×(3–1)], i.e., 6. Thus, L9 orthogonal array
was selected to make the present analysis. This design
requires nine experiments with three parameters, each at
three levels. The interactions were neglected. The as-
signment of the process parameters is given in Table 3.
2.4 Evaluation of wax injection performance
Nine experiments were performed at the trial conditions
as per Taguchi’s orthogonal array. The response

Fig. 4 Melting point of the 30.00 107.0

wax blend III 0.10

106.0
0.00
20.00
105.0
-0.10

104.0
10.00 -0.20
103.0
34.9 mJ/mg
-0.30
102.0
DTG mg/min
0.00
TG %

64 Cel -0.40
DTA uV

1.23 uV
101.0
33 Cel
-0.50
99.99 % 63 Cel
-10.00 99.5 % 100.0
100 Cel
98.97 % -0.60

145 Cel 99.0

97.9 % -0.70
-20.00
186 Cel 98.0
95.33 %
-0.80
97.0
-30.00 -0.90
96.0
-1.00
95.0
40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Temp Cel
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587 1581

Table 2 Process parameters and

their values at different levels Symbol Process parameters Range Unit Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

A Injection temperature 70–80 °C 70 75 80

B Injection time 40–50 s 40 45 50
C Injection pressure 0.5–0.7 kg/cm2 0.5 0.6 0.7

parameters considered in this study were linear shrink-
age (LS) and surface roughness (SR) of the wax pat-
terns for evaluating the wax injection performance. To
obtain a more accurate result, each combination of
experiments was repeated three times. The experimental
results of the performance characteristics, LS and SR,
are listed in Table 4.
3 Grey-based fuzzy logic
The proposed method combines grey relational analysis
with fuzzy logic in determining the process parameters
with optimal performance characteristics in the IC
process.
3.1 Grey relational analysis
is calculated to represent the correlation between the desired
and actual experimental data.
Data preprocessing is normally required since the range
and unit in one data sequence may differ from the others.
Data preprocessing is a means of transferring the original
sequence to a comparable sequence. Depending on the
characteristics of a data sequence, there are various meth-
odologies of data preprocessing available for grey relational
analysis.
For lower-the-better criterion, the normalized data can be
expressed as:
max yi ðkÞ  yi ðkÞ
xi ðkÞ ¼ ð1Þ
max yi ðkÞ  min yi ðkÞ
For higher-the-better criterion, the normalized data can
be expressed as:

Grey relational analysis (GRA) is used to solve complicated yi ðkÞ  min yi ðkÞ
xi ðkÞ ¼ ð2Þ
interrelationships among the multiple performance charac- max yi ðkÞ  min yi ðkÞ
teristic problems effectively. In GRA, system has a level of
information between black and white. In other words, in a where, xi(k) is the value after the grey relational generation,
grey system, some information is known and some infor- min yi(k) is the smallest value of yi(k) for the kth response,
mation is unknown. The grey means the primitive data with and max yi(k) is the largest value of yi(k) for the kth
poor, incomplete, and uncertain information in the grey response.
systematic theory; the incomplete relation of information The grey relational coefficient ξi(k) can be calculated as
among these data is called the grey relation. In GRA, ex-
perimental data are first normalized in a range from 0 to 1 to Δmin þ ΨΔmax
xi ðkÞ ¼ ð3Þ
reduce the variability. This process is known as grey rela- Δ0i ðkÞ þ ΨΔmax
tional generation or data preprocessing. Next, based on
normalized experimental data, the grey relational coefficient Here, Δ0i 0║x0(k)−xi(k)║ 0 difference of the absolute
value x0 (k) and xi (k), Ψ is the distinguishing coefficient
Table 3 Experimental
0≤Ψ≤1, Δmin 0∀jmin∈i∀kmin║x0(k)−xi(k)║ 0 the smallest
layout using an L9 or- Run No. Process parameters
thogonal array Table 4 Experimental
A B C results for LS and SR Sample no. LS (%) SR (nm)

1 1 1 1 1 2.296 73.4143
2 1 2 2 2 2.292 81.5523
3 1 3 3 3 2.284 86.5739
4 2 1 2 4 2.319 58.5907
5 2 2 3 5 2.311 62.6494
6 2 3 1 6 2.302 42.2754
7 3 1 3 7 2.401 46.8169
8 3 2 1 8 2.342 34.5098
9 3 3 2 9 2.327 32.816
1582
value of Δ0i, and Δmax 0∀jmax∈i∀kmax║x0(k)−xi(k)║ 0 larg-
est value of Δ0i .The value of Ψ is set to 0.5 and this value is
used in most of the situations. The grey relational coefficient
is applied to display the relationship between the optimal
(best01) and actual normalized results. The higher value of
grey relational coefficient ξ i (k) represents that the
corresponding experimental result is closer to the optimal
normalized value for the single response [30].
3.2 Grey–fuzzy logic
The grey relational analysis is performed on the basis of
lower-the-better, higher-the-better, and nominal-the-better
characteristics of each response parameter in a multi-
objective problem. This shows that there is still some level
of uncertainty in the obtained result by GRA. The theory of
fuzzy logic originated by Zadeh is an effective mathematical
model of resolving problems which contain uncertain and
vague information. Thus uncertainty in the grey relational
analysis can be checked by fuzzy logic approach. Conse-
quently, the optimization of complicated multi-response
problems can be performed effectively by integrating grey
relational analysis with fuzzy logic.
A fuzzy logic unit comprises of a fuzzifier, membership
functions, a fuzzy rule base, an inference engine, and a
defuzzifier. In the fuzzy logic analysis, the fuzzifier uses
membership functions to fuzzify the grey relational coeffi-
cient, as it contains some degree of uncertainty and vague-
ness with respect to response characteristic. A membership
function is used to determine how each value is mapped to a
membership value between 0 and 1. Next, the inference
engine performs a fuzzy reasoning on fuzzy rules to gener-
ate a fuzzy value. Finally, the defuzzifier converts the fuzzy
value into a crisp value called grey–fuzzy reasoning grade.
The structure built for this study is a two-input-one-
output fuzzy logic unit that is shown in Fig. 5. The input
variables of this fuzzy logic system are the grey relational
coefficients for linear shrinkage x1 and surface roughness x2.
The output variable is the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade y0.
Both input and output are converted into linguistic fuzzy
Membership
functions
Fuzzy
x1 Fuzzifier inference Defuzzifier
x2 engine
Fuzzy rules
x1: Grey relational coefficient for linear shrinkage
x2: Grey relational coefficient for surface roughness
y0: Grey-fuzzy reasoning grade
Fig. 5 Structure of two-input-one-output fuzzy logic
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
subsets using membership functions. A fuzzy rule base
consisting of a group of if–then control rules is developed
to express the inference relationship between input and
output. A typical linguistic fuzzy rule called Mamdani is
described as
Rule 1: If x1 is A1 and x2 is B1 then y is C1 else
Rule 2: If x1 is A2 and x2 is B2 then y is C2 else
…………………………………………………
Rule n: If x1 is An and x2 is Bn then y is Cn else
A i , B i , and C i are fuzzy subsets defined by the
corresponding membership functions, i.e., μAi, μBi, and μCi.
The fuzzy inference engine is the kernel of a fuzzy system.
It can solve a problem by simulating the thinking and decision
pattern of human being using approximate or fuzzy reasoning.
In this paper, the max–min compositional operation of Mam-
dani is adopted to perform calculation of fuzzy reasoning.
Supposing that x1 and x2 are the input variables of the fuzzy
logic system, the membership function of the output of fuzzy
reasoning can be expressed as [31].
μC0 ðyÞ ¼ ðμA1 ðx1 Þ ^ μB1 ðx2 Þ ^ μC1 ðyÞÞ
_ ::ðμAn ðx1 Þ ^ μBn ðx2 Þ ^ μCn ðyÞÞ ð4Þ
Where ∧ is the minimum operation and ∨ is the maximum
operation. Finally, a defuzzification method, called the
center-of-gravity method, is utilized here to transform the
fuzzy inference output μc0 into a non-fuzzy value y0, i.e.,
grey–fuzzy reasoning grade.
P
yμC ðyÞ
y0 ¼ P 0 ð5Þ
μC0 ðyÞ
where μC0 ðyi Þ is the membership value of yi belonging to the
fuzzy subset C0.
The larger value of grey–fuzzy reasoning grade indicates
that the experimental results are close to the ideally normal-
ized value; hence, the better is the performance characteristic.
3.3 Proposed methodology
The scheme of the proposed grey-based fuzzy logic ap-
proach (Fig. 6) is summarized as follows:
y0
Step 1: Designing an appropriate orthogonal array to
plan the experimental design and determining the level
of parameters.
Step 2: Conducting the experiments based on the or-
thogonal array.
Step 3: Data preprocessing of experimental results us-
ing Eqs. (1 and 2).
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587 1583

Designing an appropriate orthogonal array
Determining the level of parameters
Conducting the experiments based on the
orthogonal array
Data pre-processing of experimental results
presented. Further, grey–fuzzy reasoning grade for the
optimal condition is predicted and confirmatory experi-
ments are conducted for the same. Comparison of the
results of the initial as well as optimal process condi-
tions is made, and interpretation about the image of the
wax pattern at optimal injection process condition is
described.

4.1 Calculating grey relational coefficients

Computing grey relational coefficients from the
normalized values
Fuzzifying grey relational coefficient of each
response using fuzzy inference system
Determining grey-fuzzy reasoning grade by
defuzzification
Selecting optimal injection process parameters
Performing ANOVA
Conducting confirmation test and verifying the
optimal settings
Fig. 6 Proposed grey-based fuzzy logic method
Basically, the smaller the linear shrinkage and surface
roughness, the better is the quality of the wax pattern.
Therefore, lower-the-better criterion is chosen for the
above responses. So, the experimental data listed in
Table 4 have been normalized by using Eq. (1) and
grey relational coefficients for each performance charac-
teristic have been calculated using Eq. (3). Table 5
shows the normalized results (data preprocessing) and
grey relational coefficients for LS and SR corresponding
to each experiment. The experiment nos. 3 and 9 in the
Table 5 have the best response for linear shrinkage and
surface roughness, respectively. However, in order to
obtain an improved quality in the outputs and to de-
crease the uncertainty in the data, fuzzy logic approach
is further used.
4.2 Grey–fuzzy reasoning grade analysis

Step 4: Computing grey relational coefficients from the MATLAB toolbox is used for finding the grey–fuzzy
normalized values using Eq. (3). reasoning grade. The inputs for the fuzzy logic system
Step 5: Establishing membership function and fuzzy are the grey relational coefficients obtained for linear
rules to fuzzify the grey relational coefficients of each shrinkage and surface roughness of the wax patterns.
response. The triangular membership function is used for grey
Step 6: Calculating the fuzzy multi-response output by relational coefficients of both LS and SR, each with
defuzzification of the output linguistic variables into three fuzzy subsets—small (S), medium (M), and large
crisp values, i.e., grey–fuzzy reasoning grade. (L) grade, and a typical plot is shown in Fig. 7. The
Step 7: Performing the response table and response
graph to select the optimal level setting of injection
Table 5 Data preprocessing and grey relational coefficients
process parameters.
Step 8: Analyzing the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade with Sample no. Data preprocessing of the Grey relational
ANOVA. experimental results coefficients
Step 9: Conducting confirmation test and verifying the
LS SR LS SR
optimal setting of injection process parameters.
1 0.8974 0.2448 0.83 0.398
2 0.9316 0.0934 0.88 0.355
4 Results and discussions 3 1 0 1 0.333
4 0.7009 0.5205 0.626 0.51
In this section, the results obtained in determining grey 5 0.7692 0.445 0.684 0.474
relational coefficients and grey–fuzzy reasoning grades 6 0.8462 0.824 0.765 0.74
of the responses LS and SR, analysis of means 7 0 0.7396 0.333 0.658
(ANOM) for finding the optimal combination of injec- 8 0.5043 0.9685 0.502 0.941
tion process parameters, and ANOVA for identifying 9 0.6325 1 0.576 1
the most influential injection process parameter are
1584
Fig. 7 Membership functions for linear shrinkage and surface finish
output variable, i.e., grey–fuzzy reasoning grade is also
converted into linguistic fuzzy subsets using member-
ship functions of a triangle form. Unlike the input
variables, the output variable is assigned into five fuzzy
subsets, i.e., very small (VS), small (S), medium (M),
large (L), and very large (VL) grade as shown in Fig. 8.
Then, considering the conformity of two performance
characteristics for input variables, nine fuzzy rules are de-
fined and listed in Table 6 in matrix form.
Graphical representation of fuzzy logic reasoning proce-
dure for the experimental results is shown in Fig. 9. The
rows represent nine rules, and columns represent the two
input variables and one output variable. The location of
triangle indicates the determined fuzzy sets for each input
and output. The height of the darkened area in each triangle
corresponds to the fuzzy membership value for that fuzzy
set. For the first experiment, the input value of grey rela-
tional coefficients for LS and SR are 0.83 and 0.398, re-
spectively. The defuzzified output for the first experiment
gives the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade value as 0.715
(Fig. 9). The results of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade for
all the experiments obtained from the fuzzy modeling are
displayed in Table 7 and the relationship between them is
shown in Fig. 10.
It is clearly seen from Fig. 10 and Table 7 that the
experiment no. 6 has the best multiple performance
characteristics with the highest grey–fuzzy reasoning
grade among the nine runs performed. As it is already
mentioned that the higher the value of grey–fuzzy rela-
tional grade, the closer is the corresponding factor com-
bination to the optimal, hence it is optimal. It is
followed by experiments nos. 8 and 1, being ranked
as second and third, respectively.
Fig. 8 Membership functions for multi-response output
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
Table 6 Fuzzy rule table
Grey–fuzzy reasoning grade Grey relational coefficient for SR
S M L
Grey relational coefficient for LS S VS S M
M S M L
L M L VL
4.3 Performing ANOM and ANOVA
ANOM of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade is performed to find
out the combination of optimal process parameters (Table 8).
Figure 11 shows the response graph based on mean grey–fuzzy
reasoning grade. Based on Table 8 and Fig. 11, the injection
process parameters with the best levels are injection tempera-
ture at level 2 (75 °C), injection time at level 2 (45 s), and
injection pressure at level 1 (0.5 kg/cm2), i.e., A2 B2 C1. The
difference between the maximum and minimum value of the
grey–fuzzy reasoning grade of injection process parameters in
the IC process is also calculated and tabulated in Table 8. The
most effective controllable factor is the maximum of these
values, which is the injection pressure. This indicates that
injection pressure has the strongest effect on the multiple per-
formance characteristics among the other process parameters.
ANOVA was performed to investigate which injection
process parameters significantly affect the performance
characteristic [32]. This is accomplished by separating the
total variability of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grades into
contributions by each injection parameter and the error,
whereas total variability of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grades
is measured by the sum of the squared deviations from the
total mean of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade.
Fig. 9 Fuzzy logic rules viewer for the experiment no. 1
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587 1585

Table 7 Grey–fuzzy Table 8 Response table for the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade
reasoning grades and Sample no. Grey–fuzzy Rank
their rank reasoning grade Process parameter Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Max–min

1 0.715 3 A 0.6363 0.7753 0.6317 0.1436

2 0.694 6 B 0.6703 0.733 0.64 0.093
3 0.5 8 C 0.8117 0.6317 0.6 0.2117
4 0.701 5
5 0.705 4 Total mean value of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade 0 0.6811
6 0.92 1
7 0.595 7 Table 9. From the ANOVA table, it is clear that the influence
8 0.8 2 of injection pressure in affecting LS and SR is significantly
9 0.5 9 larger than the injection temperature and the holding time,
which is followed by injection temperature.

4.4 Estimation of optimum grey–fuzzy reasoning grade

Thus,
The significant process parameters and their optimum levels
SST ¼ SSF þ SSE ð6Þ
have already been identified as A2, B2, and C1. Once the
optimal level of process parameters is identified, the verifi-
X
p
 
2
cation of improvement of performance at optimum level is
SST ¼ yj  ym ð7Þ estimated by using the optimal level of the process param-
j¼1
eters. The estimated mean of grey–fuzzy reasoning grade
(ŷ0) can be computed as:
SST Total sum of squared deviations about the mean
X
q
SSF Sum of squared deviations due to each factor by0 ¼ ym þ ð yi  ym Þ ð8Þ
SSE Sum of squared deviations due to error i¼1
yj Mean of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade for the jth
experiment where, ym is the total mean of grey–fuzzy reasoning grade, yi
ym Grand mean of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade is the mean of grey–fuzzy reasoning grade at optimal level,
p Number of experiments in the orthogonal array and q is the number of parameters that significantly affect
the performance characteristics. Substituting the values of
In addition, the Fisher’s F test is used to determine which various terms in Eq. (8), ŷ0 was found to be 0.9578.
injection process parameters have a significant effect on the
performance characteristic. Usually, large value of F ratio 4.5 Confirmation of results
indicates that the change of the injection process parameter
makes a significant effect on the performance characteristic. Confirmation test is required in the present study because the
ANOVA for overall grey–fuzzy reasoning grade is shown in optimum combination of parameters and their levels, i.e.,

1.0

0.9
Grey-fuzzy reasoning grade

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Experiment no.

Fig. 10 Grey–fuzzy reasoning grade verses exp. no. Fig. 11 Grey–fuzzy reasoning grade graph
1586 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587

Table 9 ANOVA results for grey–fuzzy reasoning grade (LS and SR)

Parameter SS DOF V F ratio P, %

A 0.0399 2 0.0199 2.70 27.29

B 0.0135 2 0.0067 0.91 9.21
C 0.0782 2 0.0391 5.29 53.41
E 0.0148 2 0.0073 10.09
Total (T) 0.1465 8 100

Significant at 95 % confidence level

SS sum of squares, DOF degree of freedom, V variance, P percent
contribution

A2 B2 C1 did not correspond to any experiment of the orthog-
onal array. Three confirmation experiments were conducted at
the optimum setting of the process parameters and linear
shrinkage and surface roughness were measured. It was found
that the average linear shrinkage and average surface roughness
were 2.293 % and 39.1926 nm, respectively.
The initial injection process parameters were A3, B1, and
C3, which is the experimental no. 7 in the Table 3. As shown
in Table 10, the results of confirmation test indicate that the
linear shrinkage has improved from 2.401 to 2.293 % and
the value of surface roughness has decreased from 46.8169
to 39.1926 nm. The grey–fuzzy reasoning grade has in-
creased to 0.926, which is larger than all grey–fuzzy rea-
soning grades in the Table 7. These results prove that the
procedure of grey–fuzzy logic with orthogonal arrays can be
applied successfully for the determination of multiple char-
acteristics of the wax patterns in the IC process, with only a
very limited number of experiments and shorter time being
needed to achieve the optimal design parameters setting.
4.6 SEM image of the wax pattern at optimal condition
The scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the wax
pattern at optimal condition is shown in Fig. 12. The image
indicates that a smooth surface of the wax pattern is formed
Table 10 The comparing results of the initial and optimal injection
process parameters
Injection parameter Initial Optimal
Prediction
A3 B1 C3 A2 B2 C1
Linear shrinkage 2.401
Surface roughness 46.8169
Grey–fuzzy reasoning grade 0.595 0.957
Improvement in the 0.362
grey–fuzzy reasoning grade
Fig. 12 SEM image of the wax pattern at optimal condition
when the wax is injected into the mold at the determined
optimal injection process conditions.
5 Conclusions
In this paper, a method of grey relational analysis and fuzzy
logic based on the orthogonal array is proposed to achieve
the optimization of multi-response characteristics of wax
patterns in the IC process. Through the grey–fuzzy logic
analysis, multiple performance characteristics of wax pat-
terns are converted into single grey–fuzzy reasoning grade.
Again, analysis of means of the grey–fuzzy reasoning grade
is performed to find the optimal combination of injection
process parameters. It is found that the injection temperature
at level 2 (75 °C), injection time at level 2 (45 s), and
injection pressure at level 1 (0.5 kg/cm2) are the optimal
process parameters for the present investigation. A statistical
analysis of variance is also performed to explore which
process parameters are statistically significant. It is found
that the injection pressure and injection temperature are the
most significant process parameters contributing 53.41 and
27.29 %, respectively. After determining the optimum pro-
cess parameters, three confirmation experiments are con-
ducted to verify it. The grey–fuzzy reasoning grade of the
confirmation experiment is found to be 0.926, which is
larger than all the grey–fuzzy reasoning grades of the or-
thogonal array. Hence, the experimental results obtained
Experiment from the optimal setting have proved that the optimum
A2 B2 C1 procedure proposed in this study can greatly improve the
quality characteristic of wax patterns in terms of linear
2.293
shrinkage and surface roughness. This procedure can sim-
39.1926
plify the optimization procedure of the any complicated
0.926
multi-response problem and it can be practically applied to
0.331
effectively reduce manufacturing cost and greatly enhancing
manufacturing efficiency.
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 67:1577–1587
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