Kerf Analysis and delamination study on fiber reinforced composites cut by abrasive water jet

Abstract

Abrasive water jet machining is a non-conventional machining process that is used in automobile, aircraft, chemical processing equipment, marine, spacecraft and sporting goods industries related applications. There has been a growing interest in using composite materials in place of conventional materials due to their unique properties, such as extremely high strength to weight ratio and corrosion resistance. As a result, these materials are being used in aerospace and aeronautical structural applications. Abrasive water machine has capability to cut almost plethora of materials owing certain advantages such as no additional tools are required, no cleaning is required as it self-cleaned, fast set-up, etc. because of this characteristic’s, the attention of AWJM has attracted industries over unconventional machines. Glass fibre which covers under polymer matrix composite is considered in this experimental work. This paper evaluates an experimental study on three different thickness of laminated plates, pressures, stand-off distance and traverse rate are different parameters used for design of experiments. Top kerf width, bottom kerf width and kerf taper are the machining process responses which has been evaluated using analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. Delamination studies have been done using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).