Plain water jet cleaning of titanium alloy after abrasive water jet milling: Surface contamination and quality analysis in the context of maintenance

Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) machining has proven to be an effective and versatile technique for milling various kinds of materials, even with low machinability such as aerospace grade titanium alloy Ti6Al4V. Many studies have been performed in order to master this technology and produce geometrically accurate shapes. However, in the context of bonding repairs which require surfaces free from foreign bodies, AWJ machining presents a significant drawback in form of abrasive grit embedment. The goal of this present work is then to investigate the effect of a post-AWJ machining cleaning operation using Plain Water Jet process (PWJ – i.e. without abrasive particles) on the surface quality and material properties. For this, several characterization techniques were employed. It was concluded that the contamination has been reduced by 65% without noticeable changes in depth of cut and crater volume. The AWJ milling operation produced surface and subsurface hardening as well as biaxial compressive residual stress, mostly piloted by the jet pressure. PWJ cleaning reduced the depth of hardening without clear modification in surface hardness.

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A technical note on grit embedment following abrasive water-jet milling of a titanium alloy

Journal of Materials Processing Technology ◽

10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2004.05.024 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 159 (3) ◽

pp. 356-368 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

G. Fowler ◽

P.H. Shipway ◽

I.R. Pashby

Keyword(s):

Titanium Alloy ◽

Technical Note ◽

Water Jet ◽

Abrasive Water Jet ◽

Jet Milling

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Process Parameter Optimization for Abrasive Water Jet Machining of Titanium Alloy Using Meta-Heuristic Algorithms

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201822101004 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 221 ◽

pp. 01004

Author(s):

Vishal S Sharma ◽

Amit Kumar ◽

Munish Kumar Gupta ◽

Neeraj Bhanot

Keyword(s):

Titanium Alloy ◽

Process Parameters ◽

Heuristic Algorithms ◽

Removal Rate ◽

Short Interval ◽

Water Jet ◽

Abrasive Water Jet ◽

Influence Of Process Parameters ◽

Abrasive Water Jet Machining ◽

Industrial Sectors

Recently, the trend of optimization algorithms for improvements of surface quality and productivity characteristics in abrasive water jet machining of titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V alloy) has become increasingly more widespread in various industrial sectors i.e., aircraft and automobile Industries. Here, the present research attempts to select the ideal or best AWJM process parameters by implementing the well known meta-heuristic algorithm i.e., Teacher learning based optimization method (TLBO). The AWJM experiments as per the Taguchi L9 orthogonal array were performed on Ti 6Al-4V titanium alloy by considering jet transverse speed, stand-off distance and abrasive flow as the input parameters. Then, the influence of process parameters on surface roughness and material removal rate has been performed by means plot and ANOVA analysis. After that, the results are optimized with the TLBO method. The overall results indicate that the TLBO method is an efficient method used to find the optimal results with very short interval of time i.e., within 3 sec.

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