Experimental Investigations on Machinability of Aluminium Alloy (A413)/Flyash/B4C Hybrid Composites using Wire EDM

In this present investigation, Hybrid composites containing Aluminium alloy (A413), flyash and boron carbide were fabricated using stir casting technique. The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of parameters like gap voltage, pulse on time, pulse off time, wire feed and percentage reinforcement on the responses material removal rate as well as surface roughness while machining Aluminium alloy (A413) / flyash / boron carbide hybrid composites using Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM). Experimentation has been done on Taguchi's L-27 orthogonal array under different combinations of parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to determine the design parameters significantly influencing the response. The influence of these parameters on the responses has been evaluated using Signal to Noise (S/N) ratio analysis. The experimental results proposed optimal combination of parameters which give the maximum material removal rate and minimum surface roughness. Finally, confirmation experiments were carried out to identify the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.