Application for Prediction of Waviness in Water Jet Cutting of Granite

Abstract

Granite has broad applications as construction material, architectural stone, a decorative stone, bridges and counter-tops. Black pearl granite is excavated in large blocks providing slabs of suitable sizes. Machining of rocks with conventional method has low surface finish and incorporates cost in final finishing. Abrasive water jet cutting is used for precise cutting of granite. Burst occurs at the other side of the material which is undesirable. The burst has to be minimum for high production and minimum wastage of cost. The experiments were carried on Black pearl granite. By using Taguchi method a L27 Orthogonal Array was formed for deciding number of cuts. Input parameters such as traverse speed, abrasive flow rate and standoff distance were varied whereas water pressure and abrasive size were constant and burst area was the response which is to be calculated. After experimentation, with the help of ImageJ software area of burst is calculated for each cuts. Thereafter with the help of data acquired, coding was done in ANFIS in order to predict the burst area. The motive behind this is to increase the precision of machining and to reduce the cost behind the finishing of granite.