A study on machinability of polymer composite by abrasive water jet machining

The aim of this work is to study the effect of input parameters such as abrasive flow rate, standoff distance and transverse rate on the output process parameters taper angle and circularity in machining of polymer composite(E-glass fiber reinforced with polypropylene) by abrasive water jet machining. The polymer composite was prepared by compression molding. A circular hole of size 5mm is machined in the composite plate having a thickness of 4.8 mm by AWJM using granite of size 80 mu as abrasive. Taper angle and circularity of machined hole was measured by machine vision. Experiments were conducted based on L16 orthogonal array. Effect of input parameters was individually analyzed on corresponding output parameters using taguchi method. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was done and the output was optimized using Grey relation analysis. Results indicate that standoff distance and abrasive flow rate has high influence on the taper angle and circularity respectively.