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Effects of process parameters on surface roughness in abrasive waterjet

cutting of aluminium

Article in Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering · December 2012

DOI: 10.1007/s11465-012-0337-0

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Front. Mech. Eng. 2012, 7(4): 439–444
DOI 10.1007/s11465-012-0337-0

RESEARCH ARTICLE

M. CHITHIRAI PON SELVAN, N. MOHANA SUNDARA RAJU, H. K. SACHIDANANDA

Effects of process parameters on surface roughness in

abrasive waterjet cutting of aluminium

© Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

Abstract Abrasive waterjet cutting is a novel machining for quickly processing raw materials into usable goods;
process capable of processing wide range of hard-to-cut with no time being required for tooling. Material cutting by
materials. Surface roughness of machined parts is one of abrasive waterjets was first commercialized in the late
the major machining characteristics that play an important 1980s as a pioneering breakthrough in the area of
role in determining the quality of engineering components. unconventional processing technologies. Abrasive Water-
This paper shows the influence of process parameters on jet Cutting (AWJC) has various distinct advantages over
surface roughness (Ra) which is an important cutting the other non-traditional cutting technologies, such as no
performance measure in abrasive waterjet cutting of thermal distortion, high machining versatility, minimum
aluminium. Taguchi’s design of experiments was carried stresses on the work piece, high flexibility and small
out in order to collect surface roughness values. Experi- cutting forces and has been proven to be an effective
ments were conducted in varying water pressure, nozzle technology for processing various engineering materials
traverse speed, abrasive mass flow rate and standoff [1]. It is superior to many other cutting techniques in
distance for cutting aluminium using abrasive waterjet processing variety of materials and has found extensive
cutting process. The effects of these parameters on surface applications in industry [2]. In this method, a stream of
roughness have been studied based on the experimental small abrasive particles is introduced in the waterjet in
results. such a manner that waterjet's momentum is partly
transferred to the abrasive particles. The main role of
Keywords abrasive waterjet, aluminium, garnet, water water is primarily to accelerate large quantities of abrasive
pressure, mass flow rate, traverse speed, standoff distance particles to a high velocity and to produce a high coherent
jet. This jet is then directed towards working area to
perform cutting [3]. It is also a cost effective and
1 Introduction environmentally friendly technique that can be adopted
for processing number of engineering materials particu-
Manufacturing industry is becoming ever more time larly difficult-to-cut materials such as ceramics [4,5].
conscious with regard to the global economy. The need However, AWJC has some limitations and drawbacks. It
for rapid prototyping and small production batches is may generate loud noise and a messy working environ-
increasing in modern industries. These trends have placed ment. It may also create tapered edges on the kerf,
a premium on the use of new and advanced technologies especially when cutting at high traverse rates [6,7].
As in the case of every machining process, the quality of
AWJC process is significantly affected by the process
Received April 30, 2012; accepted June 11, 2012 tuning parameters [8,9]. There are numerous associated
parameters in this technique, among which water pressure,
M. CHITHIRAI PON SELVAN ( ) ✉ abrasive flow rate, jet traverse rate, standoff distance and
Karpagam University, Coiambatore 641001, India diameter of focusing nozzle are of great importance but
E-mail: [email protected] precisely controllable [10,11]. The main process quality
N. MOHANA SUNDARA RAJU measures include attainable depth of cut, kerf width and
Mahendra Institute of Technology, Namakkal 637503, India surface finish. Number of techniques for improving kerf
quality and depth of cut has been proposed [10–13]. In
H. K. SACHIDANANDA
Department of Engineering, Manipal University, Dubai 345050, United order to effectively control and optimize the AWJC
Arab Emirates process, predictive models for depth of cut have been
440 Front. Mech. Eng. 2012, 7(4): 439–444

developed for ceramics, aluminum, stainless steel, brass, Throughout the experiments, the nozzle was frequently
copper, titanium etc. [14–16]. checked and replaced with a new one whenever the nozzle
In this paper surface roughness is considered as the was worn out significantly. The abrasives were delivered
performance measure as in many industrial application it is using compressed air from a hopper to the mixing chamber
the main constraint on the process applicability. More work and were regulated using a metering disc. The debris of
is required to fully understand the influence of the material and the slurry were collected into a catcher tank.
important process parameters on surface roughness of The abrasive waterjet cutting head is shown in Fig. 2.
aluminium. Therefore experimental and theoretical studies
have been undertaken in this project to investigate the
effects of water pressure, nozzle traverse speed, abrasive
mass flow rates, standoff distance on surface roughness of
aluminium.

2 Experimental work
2.1 Material

Aluminum is a silvery-white metal. It is non-magnetic and

an excellent electrical conductor. Aluminium used in
commercial applications has small amounts of silicon and
iron (less than 1%) added, resulting in greatly improved
strength and hardness. As a result of its low density, low
cost, high ductility and corrosion resistance aluminium is
widely used around the world. Aluminium plates of
modulus of elasticity 70000 MPa were used as the Fig. 2 Abrasive waterjet cutting head
specimens. The dimensions of these aluminium plates
were 150 mm100 mm60 mm. 2.3 Design of experiments (DOE)
2.2 Equipment
Design of experiments (DOE) is a powerful tool that can be
used in a variety of experimental situations. DOE
The equipment used for machining the samples was Water
techniques enable designers to determine simultaneously
Jet Sweden cutter which was equipped with KMT
the individual and interactive effects of many factors that
ultrahigh pressure pump with the designed pressure of
could affect the output results in any design. To achieve a
4000 bar. The machine is equipped with a gravity feed type
thorough cut it was required that the combinations of the
of abrasive hopper, an abrasive feeder system, a pneuma-
process variables give the jet enough energy to penetrate
tically controlled valve and a work piece table with
through the specimens. In the present study four process
dimension of 3000 mm1500 mm. Sapphire orifice was
parameters were selected as control factors. The para-
used to transform the high-pressure water into a collimated
meters and levels were selected based on the literature
jet, with a carbide nozzle to form an abrasive waterjet. The
review of some studies that had been documented on
schematic of an abrasive waterjet cutting process is shown
AWJC on graphite/epoxy laminates [17], metallic coated
in Fig. 1.
sheet steels [18] and fiber-reinforced plastics [19].
Taguchi’s experimental design was used to construct the
DOE. Four process parameters, i.e., water pressure, nozzle
traverse speed, mass flow rate of abrasive particles and
standoff distance each varied at three levels as shown in
Table 1, an L9 (34) orthogonal arrays table with 9 rows
corresponding to the number of experiments was selected
for the experimentation. Table 1 shows the levels of
parameters used in experiment. Additional readings were
taken to draw graphs.

2.4 Constant parameters

The parameters that were kept constant during tests

Fig. 1 Schematic of an abrasive waterjet cutting process included the jet impact angle at neutral nozzle position
 M. CHITHIRAI PON SELVAN et al. Effects of process parameters on surface roughness 441

Table 1 Details of parameters used in experiment

Parameters Unit Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Water pressure MPa 270 335 400
Traverse speed mm/s 4.2 2.5 0.75
Mass flow rate g/s 5 8.7 12.4
Standoff distance mm 1.8 3.4 5

(90°), orifice diameter (0.35 mm), nozzle length (76.2 “SURFPAK SV-514”. Surface roughness was measured
mm), nozzle diameter (1.05 mm), abrasive material (80 at the centre of the cut for each specimen. Each
mesh garnet particles with the density of 4100 kg/m3) and measurement of Ra was taken three times and their
average diameter of abrasive particles (0.18 mm). Garnet arithmetic mean was calculated as to minimize the error.
consists of chemically 36% FeO, 33% SiO2, 20% Al2O3,
4% MgO, 3% TiO2, 2% CaO and 2% MnO2 Garnet
abrasive particles are shown in Fig. 3. 3 Results and discussion
Surface roughness is one of the most important criteria,
which help us determine how rough a workpiece material
is machined. In all the investigations it was found that the
machined surface is smoother near the jet entrance and
gradually becomes rougher towards the jet exit. This is due
to the fact that as the particles moves down they loose their
kinetic energy and their cutting ability deteriorates. By
analyzing the experimental data of all the selected
materials, it has been found that the optimum selection
of the four basic parameters, i.e., water pressure, abrasive
mass flow rate, nozzle traverse speed and nozzle standoff
distance are very important on controlling the process
outputs such as surface roughness. The effect of each of
these parameters is studied while keeping the other
parameters considered in this study as constant. The
following discussion uses the experimental data at the
centre of the cut for each specimen and the surface
Fig. 3 Garnet abrasive particles roughness is assessed based on the centre-line average Ra.

2.5 Data collection 3.1 Effect of water pressure on surface roughness

For each experiment, the machining parameters were set to The influence of water pressure on the surface roughness is
the pre-defined levels according to the orthogonal array. shown in Fig. 4. Jet pressure plays an important role in
All machining procedures were done using a single pass surface finish. As the jet pressure increases, surface
cutting. The abrasives were delivered using compressed air becomes smoother. With increase in jet pressure, brittle
from a hopper to the mixing chamber and were regulated abrasives break down into smaller ones. As a result of
using a metering disc. The abrasive flow rates were reduction of size of the abrasives the surface becomes
calibrated by measuring the time spent for a certain weight smoother. Again, due to increase in jet pressure, the kinetic
of abrasives to be completely consumed in the hopper. The energy of the particles increases which results in smoother
supply pressure was manually controlled using a pressure machined surface.
gauge. The standoff distance is controlled through the
controller in the operator control stand. The traverse speed 3.2 Effect of mass flow rate on surface roughness
and supply of abrasives were automatically controlled by
the abrasive waterjet system programmed by NC code. It needs a large number of impacts per unit area under a
The surface finish parameter employed to indicate the certain pressure to overcome the bonding strength of any
surface quality in this experiment was the arithmetic mean material. With the increase in abrasive flow rate, surface
roughness (Ra). Workpiece surface roughness Ra was roughness decreases. This is because of more number of
measured by a surface roughness equipment model impacts and cutting edges available per unit area with a
442 Front. Mech. Eng. 2012, 7(4): 439–444

surface roughness. For decreasing of the machining costs

every user try to choose the feed rate of the cutting head as
high as possible, but increasing the traverse speed always
causes increasing of inaccuracy and surface roughness. But
with increase in work feed rate the surface roughness
increased. This is due to the fact that as the work moves
faster, less number of particles are available that pass
through a unit area. Therefore, less number of impacts and
cutting edges are available per unit area, which results a
rougher surface.The relationship between the traverse
speed and the surface roughness is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 4 Water pressure versus surface roughness

higher abrasive flow rate. Abrasive flow rate determines

the number of impacting abrasive particles as well as total
kinetic energy available. Therefore, higher abrasive flow
rate, higher should be the cutting ability of the jet. But for
higher abrasive flow rate, abrasives collide among
themselves and loose their kinetic energy. It is evident
that the surface is smoother near the jet entrance and
gradually the surface roughness increases towards the jet
exit. The effect of abrasive mass flow rate on surface
roughness is shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 6 Traverse speed versus surface roughness

3.4 Effect of standoff distance on surface roughness

Surface roughness increase with increase in standoff

distance. This is shown in Fig. 7. Generally, higher
standoff distance allows the jet to expand before impinge-
ment which may increase vulnerability to external drag
from the surrounding environment. Therefore, increase in
the standoff distance results an increased jet diameter as
cutting is initiated and in turn, reduces the kinetic energy of
the jet at impingement. So surface roughness increase with
increase in standoff distance. It is desirable to have a lower
standoff distance which may produce a smoother surface
due to increased kinetic energy. The machined surface is
smoother near the top of the surface and becomes rougher
at greater depths from the top surface.

Fig. 5 Abrasive mass flow rate versus surface roughness 4 Conclusions

3.3 Effect of traverse speed on surface roughness Experimental investigations have been carried for the
surface roughness in abrasive waterjet cutting of alumi-
Traverse speed didn’t show a prominent influence on nium. The effects of different operational parameters, such
 M. CHITHIRAI PON SELVAN et al. Effects of process parameters on surface roughness 443

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