Machinability Study of Abrasive Water Jet Cutting Process on Aluminium Alloys 6082 7075 and C360 Brass

Abstract

The application of engineering materials requires cutting to produce the desired shapes and sizes. For better machinability characteristics, the essential material property is modified and used accordingly. To achieve effective machining or cutting of any material, a non-conventional process such as Abrasive Water Jet Cutting (AWJC) is most preferred in the current scenario because of its superior advantages over conventional cutting processes. Due to the particles of abrasive grains, the materials get fractured in the targeted area with much loss of kinetic energy. This type of cutting operation is fast and simple to remove the portion of materials more effectively. Due to the tremendous features and flexibility available in AWJC, much research attention is focused towards this process in studying the effects of varying input parameters and different abrasive mesh sizes for improvement of better cutting results without incurring any additional cost. Many investigations have been conducted in abrasive water jet cutting of materials using multi-objective optimization techniques. But the comparison among the optimization techniques for obtaining predicted parameter is limited. In this study, the best combination of optimal parameter is identified based on the different tools in optimization techniques such as Grey Relational Analysis (GRA), Response Surface Method (RSM) and Multi-Objective Teaching Learning Based Optimization (MOTLBO).Three different materials such as 7075 aluminum alloy (AA7075), 6082 aluminum alloy (AA6082) and C360 brass alloy (C360) were selected for machining using AWJC process to investigate the mechanical and metallurgical behaviors. The material selected was cut into specimens of 10 mm x 10 mm with thickness of 10 mm. The experiment is conducted by varying input parameters such as abrasive feed, stand-off distance and nozzle speed using Box-Behnken design with three factors and three levels consisting of 15 runs.