No abstract

This paper focused on the performance analysis of Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) outsole in order to improve the sustainability of the outsole design. According to footwear construction, outsole is the outermost layer which comes with direct contact with ground surface. A broad spectrum of materials are used in footwear construction as outsole but PVC is widely used which is manufactured from monomer named vinyl chloride. During wearing life cycle, footwear as well as the outsole has to pass through various mechanical operation, weather condition, ground surface friction and body weight pressure, hence the shape of the outsole may be distorted which may affect the foot. In order to consider these factors, several prototype outsoles required to test in biomechanics lab before mass production that is expensive and time consuming. Therefore, this study aimed to employ a finite element (FE) method to investigate the performance of PVC outsole by analyzing properties such as stress, thermal insulation behavior, factor of safety, fatigue check. A detailed 3D PVC FE model was created using Solid Works Software. The FE model calculation was compared to the physical measurements of a PVC outsole to validate the FE model. After the FE model validation, this study conducted different outsole properties analysis. This FE stress analysis reveals that the maximum stress was occurred in the heel breast portion. Therefore, material density should be given high in this portion to prevent crack development. The displacement analysis result reveals that in the forepart of the outsole, the maximum displacement occur which is 15.6748 mm and the thermal analysis result shows that there will be no crack develop in the outsole even at-20°C and the outsole was thermally stable up to-20°C.

Investment casting is the most adaptable and durable manufacturing process dating back thousands of years, with a rapidly increasing application. It is used primarily for the development of complex components near net-shape. A wax pattern in the exact replica of the cast part is used here. When the mold has been formed, the wax pattern is melted out. For this purpose this process is called lost wax process. In this present study investment casting process parameter is optimized by using Taguchi approach to improve the mechanical properties of mild steel. A set of experiments were conducted as per Taguchi's L9 orthogonal array to determine the most influential control factors. For test the performance characteristics, orthogonal range, signal to noise ratio and variance analysis were used. Data values are obtained under the constraint of different process parameters like preheat temperature, pouring temperature, preheat time to investigate their effects on the surface hardness, tensile strength of the final results. The variations in the trend of the mechanical properties were observed. It was found that high mold preheat temperature, higher pouring temperature, maximum preheat time significantly reduce the mechanical properties of the castings.