Concurrent design of electroplating system for X-abilities: a graph theoretic approach

The electroplating process has been widely accepted for plating automobile parts, aircraft parts and spacecraft components with high strength and stiffness to weight ratios, high quality and reliability, dimensional accuracy and surface finish of the product. This process is widely acceptable in various industries. Designing the electroplating products requires a lot of skill with multidisciplinary knowledge. The present approach offers a ‘virtual design’, which optimises the concurrent design approach and ultimately leads to the achievement of the six sigma limits, i.e. almost defect-free products from the plating technology. The new design utilises the advantages of the graph theoretic approach to consider all the design aspects together in a single methodology with the help of matrix algebra and permanents. It is essentially a virtual methodology which decides the process, the product strength and the weakness with the help of a multinomial defined by using matrix algebra. The design index, developed using the proposed methodology, actually decides whether the overall design is acceptable or not by taking into consideration all the aspect of the design related to the product, process, environment, etc. A step-by-step procedure is also proposed to help generate a new algorithm for software coding.