A Study on Experimental and Mathematical Analysis of Parabolic Shaped Mixing Chamber for Abrasive Water Jet Machining to Improve Performance

Abstract

The development of abrasive water jet (AWJ) as a type of high-density energy processing technology is widely recognized. Because of its heatless and noncontact processing capabilities, AWJ is used to quickly achieve cutting quality in a variety of materials, including metal, ceramics, glass, and composites. On the other hand, cutting parameters including pump pressure, cutting speed, orifice diameter, standoff distance, abrasive flow rate, and work piece affect surface roughness and dimension errors like round, burr, and taper. Beyond changing the values of these input parameters, the shape of the mixing chamber plays a significant role in the quality and performance of abrasive water jet machining system. And therefore, in this thesis, there is a strong motivation and interest in analyzing and examining the impact of the mixing chamber's form on surface quality. A parametric mixing chamber is suggested, and using mathematical modeling and experimentation, the performance is analyzed and compared to that of a cylindrical mixing chamber. In addition, mathematical modeling of abrasive water jet machining system is included under this thesis. Here the effect of input parameters on velocity profile and thus the actual volumetric flow rate and the penetration depth has been analyzed numerically. Experimental data was examined and analyzed using Minitab 17.1.0 software. Among this analysis are the normality test, and mean calculations as well as contour plots for both cylindrical and parabolic types of mixing chambers. Finally, by using a parabolic mixing chamber, the top and bottom surface roughness values were decreased from 4.9170µm to 4.7351µm and from 7.8673µm to 7.5754µm respectively. Furthermore, the taper angle was minimized from 0.8998° to 0.8098°