Modeling of the cutting front profile in abrasive water jet machining based on the energy balance approach

Abstract

High-speed abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) is a universal tool for manufacturing engineering materials. However, the application of AWJM is greatly limited due to the jet lag value caused by the cutting front profile. This paper proposes a new method to predict jet lag values at different cutting depths. The novelty is that a simplified mathematical model of the cutting front profile is developed based on the energy balance theory. Two groups of experiments were conducted to investigate the influences of process parameters on the jet lag value and the dissipated energy during cutting. The numerical regression method is adopted to obtain the energy dissipation function, which has taken the key parameters such as material property, cutting depth, traverse speed, and the initial water jet energy into consideration. The predicted curves are compared with experimental results under different operating situations with the least value of R2 = 0.9136 and the maximum deviation in percent of 16% at the jet exit point. The proposed method contributes to further research on product distortion in abrasive water jet cutting.