Material removal rate prediction for electro discharge machining: Analytical modelling

Abstract

Any electrically conductive material, irrespective of hardness, can be machined with the help of electrical discharge machining (EDM) process. A static thermo-physical finite element model is created in this study to forecast the material removal rate (MRR) while machining Al6063. Given that the electric discharge machining (EDM) process eliminates material in the shape of craters, the MRR per discharge per unit time can be determined by examining the volume of a crater produced by a single discharge. In this work, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is carried out with the Abacus tool to predict the MRR. With the help of the temperature profile, crater volume is calculated in order to compute the MRR. Validation of the model is done thereafter with the actual real-time experimentation done on similar material with the same parameters. An L9 orthogonal array was chosen while considering the combination of input parameters, viz. current, pulse on time, and duty cycle. ANOVA for means and S/N ratio has been carried out. The average percentage error in MRR between the experimental and model results is found to be 11.33%. It is also found that the nature of the curves of both analytical and experimental results are similar.