Composite cutting with abrasive water jet

A. Alberdi*, A. Suárez, T. Artaza, G.A. Escobar-Palafox, K. Ridgway

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

127 Citations (Scopus)
57 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) technology has demonstrated to be an interesting manufacturing process for space, aircraft, boat and automotive sectors due to its specific advantages when machining composite materials. However, AWJ cutting of composite laminates possesses several challenges. It is necessary to develop a methodology to adapt the process parameters for each type of FRP & CFRP material which will allow AWJ trimming operations to be easily carried out on composite materials, since machine manufacturers still do not provide good databases for composite cutting. The presented work aims at studying the behaviour of a machinability model in composite materials. The machinability index for various composite materials with different thicknesses was found experimentally, which showed very different results for different materials. A study of the effect of the abrasive waterjet process parameters on the quality of cut (taper and surface roughness) was carried out.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)421-429
Number of pages9
JournalProcedia Engineering
Volume63
Early online date10 Sept 2013
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 10 Sept 2013

Funding

Thanks are addressed to the support of the European Commission through the 7th Framework; Theme FoF: The Eco-Factory: cleaner and more resource-efficient production in manufacturing, Project number 283336 - REFORM.

Keywords

  • AWJ
  • composite
  • cutting
  • trimming
  • waterjet

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