ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters the designs had one common characteristic, that of finding out the influences of the various factors on the variable analyzed. In this chapter that characteristic still exists, but the emphasis includes finding that particular treatment combination which causes the maximum (or minimum) response, yield, or variable analyzed. In addition to finding the treatment combination that causes the optimum yield, response surface exploration includes investigation of the response surface near the optimum yield. Since one can determine the minimum of a response surface by finding the maximum of the negative of the actual response surface we will only discuss the concept of maximum. In this chapter it should be recognized that, at most, a second degree polynomial will be investigated. In general, the response surface will be some nonlinear function which may be sufficiently approximated with a quadratic polynomial in a small region near the optimum operating condition.
