Authors
Abstract
Aluminum alloy (6063) has been anodized using sulfuric acid as an
electrolyte. To study the characteristic of the anodic film, four variables, were
considered as the most dominant variables. These variables are: current density in the
range of 1- 4 A/dm2, electrolyte concentration in the range of 6 - 20 vol.%, electrolyte
temperature in the range of 10- 30oC and anodizing time between 12- 60 min.
These four variables are manipulated through the experimental work using Box –
Wilson experimental design where second order polynomial model was proposed to
correlate the studied variables with the thickness of anodic film of aluminum alloy
(6063) to estimate the coefficients of the proposed polynomial adopted via statistica
software.
The predicated models are found after statistically analyzing the significance as
follows:
Y= 27.7800 + 8.0737X1 - 0.8037X3 + 8.2078X4 - 0.6994X2
1 - 0.8882X2
2
- 1.5582X2
3 - 1.1231X1X2 + 2.6225X1X4 - 1.7931X2X3 - 1.6956X2X4
- 1.0581X3X4
where Y is the objective function (thickness of anodic film), X1 is the current density;
X2 is the electrolyte concentration; X3 is the temperature of electrolyte and X4 is the
anodizing time.
The study shows that the anodizing time and current density had shown positive
dependence of great significance on the anodic film thickness while the other two
studied variables (i.e. concentration and temperature of electrolyte) had shown small
dependence on the film thickness of aluminum alloy (6063).
Optimum conditions for achieving the maximum film thickness are obtained from
optimizing the above correlation and are found as follow: 4 A /dm2 Current
density, 6 vol. % Acid concentration, 19.5 oC Electrolyte temperature and 60 min.
time of anodizing.
Keywords
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