Experimental investigation on surface characteristics of Ti6Al4V alloy during abrasive water jet machining process

Abstract

The evolution of industrial development enabled massive improvements in the lightweight materials for products with high strength to weight ratios and superior corrosion resistance used in turbine and aerospace structures. Titanium and its alloys possess excellent service properties especially in the biomedical field, due to inherent difficulties arise while cutting these alloys using conventional processing operations. Therefore, in this research, abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) is employed as a nontraditional process to investigate the post-processing surface characteristics of Ti6Al4V alloy. The effects of process factors including water pressure, abrasive flow rate, feed rate and stand-off distance on the characteristics of the cut surfaces have been investigated. Comprehensive experimentation is carried out to determine parametric ranges involving lesser heat affected regions and improved surface characteristics. Through Taguchi based design of experiments, it is observed that abrasive flow rate and stand-off distance are the most significant parameters that affect the surface roughness and material morphology.