Experimental Analysis of Piercing in Titanium Alloy using Abrasive Waterjet Machinei

Abrasive Water Jet Machining (AWJM) is one of the fastest growing non- traditional machining processes, which uses highly pressurized water mixed with abrasive particles and is capable of cutting even difficult-to-cut materials. It is used in the manufacturing of components with intricate shapes and profiles. Here the experimentation is conducted on abrasive water jet (AWJ) machining of the most commonly used titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V. It is significantly stronger than commercially pure titanium while having the same stiffness and thermal properties The machining operations, i.e. drilling (or piercing), were conducted. For the experiments, the influences of water pressure and drilling time, mesh size and abrasive flow rate were investigated.

The experiments are carried out based on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) designed using Box-Behnken method for four parameters into three levels. Using response surface graphs the significant AWJM machining parameters and their levels are identified to achieve depth of cut, hole diameter and kerf width.