A Study to Investigate the Influence of Machining Parameters on Delamination in the Abrasive Waterjet Machining of Jute-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: An Integrated Taguchi and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) Optimization to Minimize Delamination

Abstract

In recent years, abrasive waterjet machining has emerged as a promising machining technique for the machining of composites because of its non-thermal nature. In the present study, the effect of machining parameters on the quality of machining has been studied and the process parameters have been optimized to machine jute-fiber-reinforced polymer composites. The design of the experiment was used to predict the combination of the input parameters for L27 experiments. Taguchi and response surface methodology (RSM) techniques were employed to analyze the experimental data and identify the optimum combination of process parameters to achieve as little delamination as possible. The results indicate that an increase in the values of the parameters traverse speed and abrasive mass flow rate leads to an increase in the damage obtained. However, an increase in the value of the parameter stand-off distance minimizes the damage produced. To achieve minimum delamination, the optimum combination of input parameters is obtained through Taguchi and RSM. For the present experimental condition, to achieve minimum delamination, the parameter traverse speed should be set at 20 mm/min, the stand-off distance should be 4 mm, and the abrasive flow rate should be set at 0.25 kg/min. The results confirm that the optimum combination of parameters obtained through both approaches is similar. This investigation results indicated a significant improvement in the cutting quality with reduced damage, achieved through the optimized process parameters. For the considered range of parameters, graphs are plotted such that any intermediate values can be anticipated within the considered range without performing any further experiments. The present work signifies the effect of fiber orientation on delamination.