EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY ON JET ABRASIVE MACHINING OF ALUMINUM 2024 - T3

Abrasive jet machining is not very effective on soft materials, therefore for a highly efficient process, it is necessary to optimize the process parameters to increase the material removal rate and obtain a good surface quality on soft material. In the present work a new experimental and numerical investigation was carried out to optimize the abrasive jet drilling operation on aluminum 2024-T3. A high-velocity jet of air carrying fine abrasive particles of silica sand SiO2 was used to perform the experiments. The abrasive jet machine used in this work can perform CNC drilling. The abrasive jet of SiO2 is given by the x- and z -axes while the specimen is motorized by the y-axis. The impact angle was chosen as 90 degrees. Through this work an experimental study of the material's removal rate (MRR) at two different mass flow rates of abrasive particles (MP) was carried out. The numerical study was approximated to the impact of a single particle at MP=1.2 g/s with a particle jet velocity of around 200 m/s and for MP=2.2 g/s with a particle jet velocity of around 300 m/s. The numerical results for the eroded mass compared with the experimental results are close. The high precision, rapidity and efficiency of the present optimized process make it an alternative to traditional drilling processes.