Optimisation of Process Parameters for Minimising the Surface Roughness During Wire-Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) of Silicon Particle Reinforced Al6061 Composite

Abstract

In the recent era, the advanced machining methods are popularly used for machining of simple to complex profiles in engineering materials. In this work, the machinability of 8 % silicon particle reinforced Al6061 composite is investigated by WEDM. The effect of control parameters namely current (Ic ), pulse-off time (Toff), wire-speed (Ws ), pulse-on time (Ton) and voltage (Iv ) on surface roughness is investigated. Taguchi L16 orthogonal array is used in the experimental design and the results are analysed using statistical methods. Study showed that, the Tonis the highly significant parameter which contributed maximum (38.27%) to variation of surface roughness followed by voltage (31.02 %), wire speed (17.11 %), current (7.11%) and pulse-off time (5.39 %). The optimum settings which produced the minimum surface roughness (expected Ra- 3.302 µm) are current: level 3 (4A), Ton: level 1 (20 µs), Toff: 10 µs (level 1), Ws- level 4 (1400 rpm) and voltage - 80 V (level 1). The regression model is developed for predicting the surface roughness with � 2 value of87.30%. The model predicting accuracy of the model is verified for the experimental results.