Maximum depth of cut for ceramics using abrasive waterjet technique

Abstract

The abrasive waterjet cutting technique is a controlled erosive process in which the impact of high velocity water and abrasives cause cutting of the target material. Advanced engineering ceramic materials have been used in many applications. Cutting of such materials by abrasive waterjet is becoming the recent cutting technique. In the present work, the erosion model by Evans et al. [A.G. Evans, M.E. Gulden, M.E., Rosenblatt, Impact damage in brittle materials in the elastic-plastic response regime, Proc. R. Soc. London, Sec. A, 361 (1978) 343–365] was adopted in order to develop a waterjet cutting model capable of predicting the depth of cut of ceramic materials as a function of the material properties and the process parameters involved. Closed form expression for the maximum depth of cut was obtained. The predicted maximum depths of cut for three ceramic materials were compared with recent experimental results, where both showed an agreement within a maximum deviation of 7.5%. The effect of the process parameters on the maximum depth of cut for a given material was also studied to further investigate the capabilities and limitations of the proposed model.