Ni-Cr-Mo Cladding on Mild Steel Surface using CO2 Laser and Process Modeling with Response Surface Methodology (RSM)

Laser cladding is one of the advanced coating technologies in the present day. Application of mild steel component in an open atmosphere is limited owing to its high corrosiveness in nature. To overcome this limitation, in the present work an anti-corrosive powder mixture of Ni, Cr and Mo with a selected ratio is deposited as a thin layer on the mild steel plate with the help of 3.5 kW CO2 laser. The laser cladding process is selected as it is fast and precise, compared to other coating technology. Experiments are performed according to L9 Taguchi orthogonal array. The parametric study on laser cladding process using response surface methodology (RSM) is presented in this paper. This includes the study of influence of process parameters on responses and process optimization to find the optimal input parameters combination by expecting the improved clad quality. Based on experimental data, a mathematicalmodel is developed to find the relationship between process input parameter and responses. It is seen that there is a high degree of approximation between the experimental results and predicted one.