THE FABRICATION OF SUPERHYDROPHOBIC COATING ON ASTM A36 STEEL BY ELECTRODEPOSITION TECHNIQUE: ANALYSIS OF PROCESS PARAMETERS USING TAGUCHI AND ANOVA METHODS

• Main Author: Vere Adonis, Gian
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/67862
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Steel is a metal alloy commonly used in various applications, for example in construction, industry, and marine. One of the most common types of structural series steel used in almost all industries is ASTM A36 steel. However, these steels have a weakness, namely the tendency of corrosion, even at room temperature still requires a proper coating strategy. Corrosion of structural steel is strongly influenced by its wettability with water, which is the ability to spread water droplets on the surface. Therefore, to reduce its corrosion tendency, it is necessary to make a surface that has a water contact angle above 150° or what is commonly called superhydrophobic. This study aims to analyze the significance and percent contribution of the superhydrophobic layer fabrication process parameters using the ANOVA method, determine the optimum conditions for superhydrophobic layer fabrication using the Taguchi method, and study the characteristics of the fabricated superhydrophobic layer at optimum conditions. This research uses the electrodeposition method, which consists of the electrodeposition process, solution immersion, and surface modification. The varied parameters were electrodeposition time, solution-immersion temperature, immersion time in myristic acid, and myristic acid concentration. The coating material used to fabricate this superhydrophobic layer is brass (Cu-Zn alloy). The experimental design of this study was determined using the orthogonal Taguchi L9 array (34) and was carried out in duplicate. The contact angle test was carried out using Contact Angle Measurement after the experiment was carried out on all orthogonal. Furthermore, an analysis was carried out using ANOVA to determine the significance and percent contribution of the parameters and the Taguchi method to determine the optimum conditions for the fabrication of the superhydrophobic layer. After that, the experiment was repeated in duplicate at optimum conditions. The fabricated samples under optimum conditions were measured for their contact angles and their surface morphology was observed using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The ANOVA results showed that the four parameters used in this study were significant for the fabrication of the superhydrophobic layer, with the percent contribution of each parameter was 31,110% for electrodeposition time, 19,256% for solution-immersion temperature, 41,420% for immersion time in myristic acid, and 3,966% for myristic acid concentration. The average contact angle produced under optimum conditions were (151,20 ± 7,58)°. The SEM results showed that the superhydrophobic layer formed dandelion-like hierarchical structures with the estimated nanoparticles formed were nano CuO and nano ZnO.