Experimental investigation of spark gap and material removal rate of Al/ZrO2(P)-MMC machined with wire EDM

Abstract

This research paper presents an experimental investigation of the machining characteristics and optimization of wire EDM process parameters during machining of newly developed Al/ZrO2(p) metal matrix composite (MMC). Central composite design and full factorial approach of response surface methodology (RSM) have been used to design the experiment. This paper outlines the development of mathematical response surface models for spark gap and material removal rate and their applications to optimize the wire EDM process parameters using desirability function approach. Multi-response optimization obtained by assigning different importance to the responses can be applied for the roughing cut and final cut. Additivity test has been performed to validate the mathematical model developed by RSM. The developed mathematical models for spark gap and material removal rate will provide guidelines to the manufacturing engineers for prediction of spark gap and material removal rate in advance. The maximum material removal rate, i.e., 25.375 mm3/min and minimum spark gap, i.e., 0.017 mm indicate that the newly developed Al/ZrO2(p)-MMC can be effectively machined by wire EDM and can be used in aerospace industries.