Mechanism and experimental investigation of ultra high pressure water jet on rubber cutting

The recycle and reuse of rubber materials has become a global environment problem with the fast increasing amount of waste rubber. Compared to traditional recycle methods, ultra high pressure water jet, as a fast developing tool of cool cutting, can be used in recycling rubber materials without damaging the internal organization structure of materials. This paper investigates ultra high pressure jet cutting rubber in mechanism and experiment. Different from metallic materials and brittle materials, rubber materials are cut by the force of shear and tensile under the impinging of ultra high pressure water jet and the erosion of high speed water flow with rubber powder. The overall structure of kerf is Y shape. The upper section of Y shape is caused by shear, the middle section is resulted from both shear and tensile, and the bottom section is a result of the erosion and the tensile. The results of experiment show: (1) a significant linear correlation between cutting depth and pump pressure;(2) 2.0 mm/s is the optimal transverse velocity under the current experiment condition;(3) the cutting depth has a decreasing tendency with the stand-off distance increased. It can be concluded from orthogonal analysis that pump pressure has a signification effect on cutting depth, nozzle transverse velocity is not remarkable, and the effect of stand-off distance is not obvious.