Experimental investigations of abrasive water jet machining on hybrid composites

Abstract

Abrasive Water Jet Machining (AWJM) is one of the prominent non-conventional machining processes. The unique characteristics of AWJM is absence of heat affected zone due to which it is widely used for variety of materials and applications. Over the past couple of decades, composites are replacing the conventional materials due to the advantages such as high strength to weight ratio, high corrosion resistance, etc. Although near net shape manufacturing is possible with the composite materials, machining is often required to fulfil the requirements of assembly and geometrical & dimensional tolerances. AWJM is proved to be the favoured choice of industries for machining of composites. In the current work, the hybrid composite of epoxy and fibre glass is prepared. The AWJM machining is carried out on the prepared composite considering the process parameters such as Traverse Speed, Abrasive Flow rate, Water Pressure, and Stand-off Distance. Surface Roughness (Ra) and Kerf Taper Angle (Kerf) are considered as the process responses. The statistical analysis through ANOVA is carried out and contour plots are plotted for investigating the behaviour of the process. The results show that, with optimum process parameters, AWJM could machine the hybrid composites efficiently. The current work could be extended further for mathematical modelling and optimization of the AWJM process on hybrid composites.