Finite element prediction of material removal rate due to traveling wire electrochemical spark machining

Manufacturing engineers are facing new challenges during machining of electrically nonconducting or partially conducting materials such as glass, quartz, ceramics, and composites. Traveling wire electrochemical spark machining (TW-ECSM), a largely unknown technology, has been applied successfully for cutting these types of materials. However, hardly any theoretical work has been reported related to machining performance of TW-ECSM process. The present work is an attempt in this direction. In the present work, a 3-D finite element transient thermal model has been developed to estimate the temperature field and material removal rate (MRR) due to Gaussian distributed input heat flux of a spark during TW-ECSM. First, the developed code calculates the temperature field in the workpiece and then MRR is calculated using this temperature field. The calculated MRR has been compared with the experimental MRR for verifying the approach. Computational experiments have been performed for the determination of energy partition and spark radius of a single spark. The effects of various process parameters such as energy partition, duty factor, spark radius, and ejection efficiency on MRR have been reported. It has been found that MRR increases with increase in energy partition, duty factor, and ejection efficiency but decreases with increase in spark radius.