An SPH Simulation on Vibration Assisted Abrasive Erosion of Hard Brittle Material in Abrasive Waterjet Machining

Abstract

Abrasive waterjet machining (AWJ) is one of the fastest growing non-conventional machining methods. However, low pressure and fine abrasive implemented in AWJ precision machining for reducing the surface damage reduce the efficiency. Therefore ultrasonic vibration is considered to apply on the workpiece to improve the machining efficiency. In order to analyze the effect of the vibration on erosion in AWJ machining, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is used to simulate the erosion process for avoiding the mesh distortion in finite element method (FEM) when simulating large deformation and high strain rate problems. The results show that the application of ultrasonic vibration can effectively improve the erosion rate due to the dynamics variation of the erosion process.