Multi Criteria Optimization Approaches in Electric Discharge Machining

Abstract

Abstract Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) is a prime technique employed to the materials that are almost impossible to be cut by conventional machining. Performance of the EDM is assessed on the ground of Material Removal Rate (MRR), Tool Wear Rate (TWR), Relative Wear Ratio (RWR) and Surface Roughness (SR). The major factors affecting the above performance are Voltage, Pulse on time, Current, Pulse off time, Inter Electrode Gap & Duty cycle. An extensive work had been performed by the pioneer researchers in the field of optimization for aforesaid performance measures against several process parameters. Every researcher uses different materials with different levels of parameters whereas some use same materials but with a different input, output parameters and different levels to variate and see the differences. To solve the problem efficiently different researchers used various optimization techniques some of which are Taguchi, RSM, ANOVA, MOGA II, Passing Vehicle Search Algorithm, Genetic Algorithm, GRA, Full Factorial Approach, VIKOR index, Stochastic Algorithm etc. It was felt that a review would be essential to know the comparison and the subsequent contribution of the different parameters, performance output, algorithm & various optimization techniques being used to optimize the process parameters and their resulting effect on the performance. The purpose of this paper is to study the emerging trends and researches done in the area of EDM. Various multi criterion optimization techniques have been reviewed in this paper.