Experimental Analysis of Kerf Taper Angle in Cutting Process of Sugar Palm Fiber Reinforced Unsaturated Polyester Composites with Laser Beam and Abrasive Water Jet Cutting Technologies.

Fathi Masoud,Mohd Khairol Anuar Mohd Ariffin,Emin Bayraktar,S M Sapuan,Y Nukman

doi:10.3390/polym13152543

Fathi Masoud, Mohd Khairol Anuar Mohd Ariffin + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13152543

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Abstract

In this research, the effect of processing input parameters on the kerf taper angle response of three various material thicknesses of sugar palm fiber reinforced unsaturated polyester composite was investigated as an output parameter from abrasive waterjet and laser beam cutting techniques. The main purpose of the study is to obtain data that includes the optimum input parameters in cutting the composite utilizing these two unconventional techniques to avoid some defects that arise when using traditional cutting methods for cutting the composites, and then make a comparison to determine which is the most appropriate technique regarding the kerf taper angle response that is desired to be reduced. In the laser beam cutting process, traverse speed, laser power, and assist gas pressure were selected as the variable input parameters to optimize the kerf taper angle. While the water pressure, traverse speed, and stand-off-distance were the input variable parameters in the case of waterjet cutting process, with fixing of all the other input parameters in both cutting techniques. The levels of the input parameters that provide the optimal response of the kerf taper angle were determined using Taguchi’s approach, and the significance of input parameters was determined by computing the max–min variance of the average of the signal to-noise ratio (S/N) for each parameter. The contribution of each input processing parameter to the effects on kerf taper angle was determined using analysis of variation (ANOVA). Compared with the results that were extrapolated in the previous studies, both processes achieved acceptable results in terms of the response of the kerf taper angle, noting that the average values produced from the laser cutting process are much lower than those resulting from the waterjet cutting process, which gives an advantage to the laser cutting technique.

Highlights

Natural fibers have been primarily viewed as waste and remnants until recently, as they were not efficiently exploited
Due to the cutting forces associated with conventional cutting methods and the heterogeneous nature of composites, in addition to specimen fixing that requires a relatively large clamping force, several serious defects appear with the application of traditional cutting techniques in the composites cutting processes, such as, material damage, poor surface quality, delamination, fiber fraying, and dimensional instability [15,16,17,18,19,20]
The current study investigates and analyzes the influence of significant input parameters on the kerf taper angle response in cutting three different material thicknesses (2, 4, and 6 mm) of sugar palm fiber reinforced unsaturated polyester (SPF-UPE) composite cut with Laser beam and abrasive waterjet cutting techniques

Summary

Introduction

Natural fibers have been primarily viewed as waste and remnants until recently, as they were not efficiently exploited. This research covers a good range of material thicknesses in contrast to most of the previous studies that were conducted on natural fiber composites machined using unconventional techniques, which were limited to only one material thickness [9], which makes them difficult to be generalized to different material thicknesses, that may contribute to the limitation of their results in terms of importance In both cutting processes, the input parameters that have the greatest impact on the kerf taper angle response were selected as variable parameters with three levels of values, while the rest of the input parameters that had no discernible effect on the kerf taper angle were fixed. Nugroho et al [34] investigated the influence of laser power, traverse speed, gas pressure, and nozzle distance on the kerf properties of agel leaf fiber

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