Investigation and optimization for depth of cut and surface roughness for control depth milling in Titanium Ti6AL4V with abrasive water jet cutting

Abrasive water jet (AWJ) cutting has been widely used in industries because of its precise cutting tech- nique. However, the effectiveness of AWJ cutting is dependent on machine operating parameters and the material properties. In this research AWJ cutting was applied on Titanium Ti6AL4V Grade 5 material to investigate the effects on depth of cut (DoC) and roughness. Taguchi L 27 experiments were conducted at three levels with operating parameters such as water pressure, transverse speed, abrasive mass flow rate, abrasive orifice size; a novel approach of ratio 3:1 was adopted with nozzle and orifice diameter to accommodate more parameters for investigation and to inspect the variation of these parameters in real time. Minitab 2017 software was used to simulate the influencing parameters with ANOVA. (GRA) Grey relational analysis linked with Taguchi technique represents a novel approach to optimization. It is a normalization estimation technique extended to elucidate the complex multi -performance character- istics. GRA is used for optimizing the process parameter which helped in determining the optimal param- eters for roughness and depth of cut, ANOVA was used for analyzing the effect of independent variables on dependent variables, as per ANOVA the P values and the S/N ration rank indicated that water pressure was the most influencing parameter for surface roughness and transverse speed was the most influencing parameter for the depth of cut. The prediction of cutting depth through GRA optimization proved a valu- able tool for the controlled depth milling (CDM) in Ti6Al4V material. (c) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer -review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Con- ference on Recent Advances in Materials & Manufacturing Technologies.