DESIGN OF

EXPERIMENTS
School of Chemical and Bio Engineering
Design of Experiments
• Experiments are performed by investigators in virtually all
fields of inquiry, usually to discover something about a
particular process or system.
• Experiment can be defined as a test or series of tests in
which purposeful changes are made to the input variables
of a process or system so that we may observe and
identify the reasons for changes that may be observed in
the output response
• The design is the conceptual structure within which
research is conducted; it constitutes the blueprint
• Collection of Data,
• Measurement of Data
• Analysis of data
Design of Experiments
“All experiments are designed experiments, some are
poorly designed, some are well-designed”

• Design of experiments (DOE) is a systematic, rigorous

approach to engineering problem-solving that applies
principles and techniques at the data collection stage so
as to ensure the generation of valid, defensible, and
supportable engineering conclusions.

• In addition, all of this is carried out under the constraint of

a minimal expenditure of engineering runs, time, and
money.
Design of Experiments
In other words, the design includes an outline of what the
researcher will do from writing the hypothesis and its
operational implications to the final analysis of data.
• More explicitly, the design decisions happen to be in respect of:
(i) What is the study about?
(ii) Why is the study being made?
(iii) Where will the study be carried out?
(iv) What type of data is required?
(v) Where can the required data be found?
(vi) What periods of time will the study include?
(vii) What will be the sample design?
(viii) What techniques of data collection will be used?
(ix) How will the data be analyzed?
(x) In what style will the report be prepared?
Design of Experiments
• Experiments are used to study the performance of
processes and systems.
• The process or system can be represented by
Design of Experiments
• There are four general engineering problem areas in which
DOE may be applied:
1. Comparative Experiments
2. Screening/Characterizing Experiments
3. Modeling Experiments
4. Optimizing Experiments
• Comparative Experiments:- the engineer is interested in
assessing whether a change in a single factor has in fact
resulted in a change/improvement to the process as a whole.
• If an Engineer wants to make a decision about two or more
current alternatives, he or she can use Design of Experiments
methods.
For example, a new catalyst can be compared with the existing
one or two currently used machines must be replaced with the
new one but which of them?
Design of Experiments
• Screening/Characterizing Experiments: the engineer is
interested in "understanding" the process as a whole in the
sense that he/she wishes (after design and analysis) to have in
hand a ranked list of important through unimportant factors
(most important to least important) that affect the process.
• Modelling: the engineer is interested in functionally modeling
the process with the output being a good-fitting (= high
predictive power) mathematical function, and to have good (=
maximal accuracy) estimates of the coefficients in that function.
• Optimizing: the engineer is interested in determining optimal
settings of the process factors; that is, to determine for each
factor the level of the factor that optimizes the process
response.
APPLICATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
The application of experimental design techniques early in
process development can result in
• Improved process yields
• Reduced variability and closer conformance to nominal or target
requirements
• Reduced development time
• Reduced overall costs
Experimental design methods also play a major role in
engineering design activities, where new products are
developed and existing ones improved
• Evaluation and comparison of basic design configurations
• Evaluation of material alternatives
• Selection of design parameters-the product/process is robust
• Determination of key product design parameters affecting performance
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
[Link] of the statement of the problem.
Pre-
Experimental
2. Choice of factors, levels, and ranges/ Planning
Selection of the response variable

3. Choice of experimental design

4. Performing the experiment.

5. Statistical analysis and interpretation of the

data

6. Conclusions and recommendations.

Guidelines For Designing Experiments
1. Recognition of and the statement of the problem

• It is important to solicit input from all concerned parties

and perform extensive literature review:
• Is this a new process or system?
• is it a mature or reasonably well-understood system?

A clear statement of the problem often contributes

substantially to better understanding of the phenomenon
being studied and the final solution of the problem
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
2. Selection of Response Variable
• Response Variables which gives useful information about
the process under study

The average or standard deviation of the measured

characteristics or its derivation will be the response
variables

Multiple responses are not unusual

• Example:
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
3. Choice of factors, levels, and ranges

• Factors that may influence the Response variable (EG:

performance of a process or system)
• Design factor – actual factor to be studied
• Held constant factor‐factor held at constant
• Allowed -to-vary factor - Considered to have small effect

• Nuisance (Extraneous) factors are factors that may have

effect but we are not interested in them in the context of
the present experiment
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
3. Choice of Factors, Ranges, and Levels
Nuisance (Extraneous) factors are factors that may have
effect but we are not interested in them in the context of the
present experiment
• A controllable nuisance: factor is one whose levels may
be set by the experimenter
• Uncontrollable factor: is Nuisance factor which
uncontrollable in the experiment, but it can be measured,
It can be compensated using analysis of covariance
• Noise Factor: a factor that varies naturally and
uncontrollably in the process can be controlled for
purposes of an experiment.
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
3. Choice of Factors, Ranges, and Levels
• Design factor ranges are ranges over which these
factors will be varied
E.g.

• Factor Levels: are specific values of Design factor at

which runs (experiments) will be made within the given
design factor range
• Select how many levels of each variable to use.
E.g.
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
4. Choice of experimental design

• consideration of sample size (number of replicates)

• selection of suitable run order for the experimental trials
(randomization, blocking, etc.)
• determination of whether or not blocking or other
randomization restrictions
• There are several interactive statistical software packages
that support this phase of experimental design.

In selecting the design, it is important to keep the

experimental objectives in mind
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
5. Performing the experiment
• When running the experiment, it is vital to monitor the
process carefully to ensure that everything is being done
according to plan.
• Errors in experimental procedure at this stage will usually
destroy experimental validity.
• Up-front planning is crucial to success.

It is easy to underestimate the logistical and planning

aspects of running a designed experiment in a complex
manufacturing or research and development environment.
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
[Link] analysis of data
Statistical methods are used to analyze the data so that results
and conclusions are objective rather than judgmental in nature

Conduct hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimation

• Statistical methods cannot prove that factor has particular

effect, they only provide guidelines as to the reliability and
validity of results

• Present experimental result in terms of empirical models

Guidelines For Designing Experiments
[Link] analysis and interpretation of data
It is also usually very helpful to present the results of many
experiments in terms of an empirical model, that is, an
equation derived from the data that expresses the
relationship between the response and the important
design factors.

Residual analysis and model adequacy checking are also

important analysis techniques.
Guidelines For Designing Experiments
7. Conclusion and recommendation
• Once the data have been analyzed, the experimenter
must draw practical conclusions about the results and
recommend a course of action.

• Graphical methods are often useful in this stage,

particularly in presenting the results to others.

• Follow-up runs and confirmation testing should also be

performed to validate the conclusions from the experiment
Basic Principles of DoE
• Replication
• By replication we mean a repetition of the basic experiment.
• According to the Principle of Replication, the experiment should be
repeated more than once.
• By doing so the statistical accuracy of the experiments is increased
• Reduce the effect of uncontrolled variation (i.e., increase precision).
• Increase the statistical accuracy of the experiments
• Quantify uncertainty.

A related point:
An estimate is of no value without some statement of the
uncertainty in the estimate.
 Basic Principles of DoE
• Randomization
• Running the trials in an experiment in random order
i.e. both the allocation of the experimental material and the
order in which the individual runs or trials of the experiment
are to be performed are randomly determined.
• Notion of balancing out effects of “Extraneous” variables
• Statistical methods require that the observations (or errors)
be independently distributed random variables.
At random does not mean haphazardly or arbitrarily.
One needs to explicitly randomize using
A computer, or
Coins, dice or cards.

21
Basic Principles of DoE
Why Randomize?

• Avoid bias
• For example: the first six mice you grab may have
intrinsically higher BP.

• Control the role of chance.

• Randomization allows the later use of probability theory,
and so gives a solid foundation for statistical analysis.
Basic Principles of DoE
• The Principle of Local Control (Blocking) is another
important principle of experimental designs.
Under it the extraneous factor, the known source of variability, is
made to vary deliberately over as wide a range as necessary and
this needs to be done in such a way that the variability it causes can
be measured and hence eliminated from the experimental error.
• Blocking is a design technique used to improve the
precision with which comparisons among the factors of
interest are made.
Often blocking is used to reduce or eliminate the
variability transmitted from nuisance factors; that is,
factors that may influence the experimental response
but in which we are not directly interested.
Important Experimental Design
• Experimental design refers to the framework or
structure of an experiment and as such there are
several experimental designs.

• We can classify experimental designs into two

broad categories
• Informal experimental designs &
• Formal experimental designs
Important Experimental Design
• Informal experimental designs are those designs that
normally use a less sophisticated form of analysis based
on differences in magnitudes. Informal experimental
designs:
(1) Before-and-after without control design.
(2) After-only with control design.
(3) Before-and-after with control design.
Important Experimental Design
1. Before-and-after without control design: In such a
design a single test group or area is selected and the
dependent variable is measured before the introduction of
the treatment.

The main difficulty of such a design is that with the passage of time
considerable extraneous variations may be there in its treatment effect.
Important Experimental Design
• 2. After-only with control design: In this design two
groups (test and control) are selected and the treatment is
introduced into the test area only.

The basic assumption in such a design is that the two areas are
identical with respect to their behaviour towards the phenomenon
considered. If this assumption is not true, there is the possibility of
extraneous variation entering into the treatment effect.
 Important Experimental Design
3. Before-and-after with control design: In this design
two areas are selected and the dependent variable is
measured in both the areas for an identical time-period
before the treatment

This design is superior to the above two designs for the simple reason that it
avoids extraneous variation resulting both from the passage of time and from
non-comparability of the test and control areas.
But at times, due to lack of historical data, time or a comparable control area, we
should prefer to select one of the first two informal designs stated above.
Important Experimental Design
• Formal experimental designs offer relatively more
control and use precise statistical procedures for analysis.

(4) Completely randomized design (C.R. Design).

(5) Randomized block design (R.B. Design).
(6) Latin square design (L.S. Design).
(7) Factorial designs.
 Important Experimental Design-CRD
• 4. Completely randomized design (C.R. design): Involves
only two principles i.e., the principle of replication and the
principle of randomization of experimental designs.
• It is the simplest possible design and its procedure of analysis is
also easier.
• One-way analysis of variance (or one-way ANOVA)* is used to
analysis such a design.
• Even unequal replications can also work in this design.
• It provides maximum number of degrees of freedom to the error.
Such a design is generally used when experimental
areas happen to be homogeneous.
Technically, when all the variations due to uncontrolled
extraneous factors are included under the heading of chance
variation, we refer to the design of experiment as C.R. design.
Important Experimental Design-CRD
• Suppose the researcher wants to compare two groups of
students who have been randomly selected and randomly
assigned.
• Two different treatments viz., the usual training and the
specialized training are being given to the two groups.
• The researcher hypothesizes greater gains for the group
receiving specialized training.
• To determine this, he tests each group before and after
the training, and then compares the amount of gain for the
two groups to accept or reject his hypothesis.
• This is an illustration of the two-groups randomized
design, wherein individual differences among students are
being randomized.
Important Experimental Design - RBD
• 5. Randomized block design (R.B. design) is an
improvement over the C.R. design.

• In the R.B. design, subjects are first divided into groups,

known as blocks, such that within each group the subjects
are relatively homogeneous in respect to some selected
variable.

• In many experimental design problems, it is necessary to

design the experiment so that the variability arising from a
nuisance factor can be controlled.
Important Experimental Design - RBD
Example
• An article in the Journal of Strain Analysis (1983, Vol. 18, No. 2)
compares several methods for predicting the shear strength for
steel plate girders (beams). Data for three of these methods
when applied to four specific girders, are shown in Table. We
wish to determine whether there is any difference (on the
average) between the two methods.
 Important Experimental Design - RBD
• Because each girders has different strength (potentially),
and this variability in strength was not of direct interest,
we designed the experiment by using the two test
methods on each girder and then comparing the average
difference in strength readings on each girder to zero
using the paired t-test
• If we use four girders as the experimental units,
a randomized complete block design would
appear as shown

• The design is called a randomized complete

block design because each block is large
enough to hold all the treatments and because
the actual assignment of each of the three
treatments within each block is done randomly.
Important Experimental Design - RBD
• The design is called a randomized complete block design because
each block is large enough to hold all the treatments and because the
actual assignment of each of the three treatments within each block is
done randomly.
• Once the experiment has been conducted, the data are recorded in a
table, such as is shown in Table.

• The observations in this table, say yij, represent the response

obtained when method i is used on girder j.
Important Experimental Design - RBD
• The general procedure for a randomized complete block design consists of
selecting b blocks and running a complete replicate of the experiment in each
block.
• The data that result from running a randomized complete block design for
investigating a single factor
• with a levels and b blocks are shown in Table
Important Experimental Design - LSD
6. Latin square design (L.S. design)
• For instance, an experiment has to be made through which the
effects of five different varieties of fertilizers on the yield of a
certain crop, say wheat, it to be judged.
• In such a case the varying fertility of the soil in different blocks
in which the experiment has to be performed must be taken
into consideration; otherwise the results obtained may not be
very dependable because the output happens to be the effect
not only of fertilizers, but it may also be the effect of fertility of
soil.
• Similarly, there may be impact of varying seeds on the yield.
To overcome such difficulties, the L.S. design is used when
there are two major extraneous factors such as the varying
soil fertility and varying seeds.
Important Experimental Design - LSD
The Latin-square design is one wherein each treatment
appears but is used only once in each row and in each
column of the design.
• In other words, the treatments in a L.S. design are so allocated
among the plots that no treatment occurs more than once in any one
row or any one column.
7. Factorial designs: Factorial designs are used in
experiments where the effects of varying more than one
factor are to be determined.
• By a factorial experiment we mean that in each
complete trial or replicate of the experiment all possible
combinations of the levels of the factors are investigated.