The optimal cutting times of multipass abrasive water jet cutting

Cutting is one of the most important applications of abrasive water jet. However, there are always some quality defects in the cross section cut by abrasive water jet. It is found that multipass abrasive water jet cutting can effectively improve the cutting quality. In this paper, two types of multipass water jet cutting were summarized and redefined clearly first. Then, taking AISI 304 stainless steel as the workpiece, the cross sections after cutting with different cutting times were analyzed and compared with that after single cutting. The overall roughness and the overall taper of the section were obtained by a reasonable method. Besides, in order to give consideration to both the cutting quality and the processing time, the concept of quality improvement rate was put forward. On this basis, with the improvement rate as the index, the optimal cutting times for cutting AISI 304 stainless steel with multipass abrasive water jet were analyzed from two aspects of surface quality and kerf taper, and the optimal cutting times of cutting other materials by multipass abrasive water jet can be studied according to the same idea. The study of this paper provides important reference for the application of multipass abrasive water jet cutting.