Performance Evaluation of Abrasive Water Jet Machining on Banana Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composite

Abstract

This work deals with the investigation of Abrasive Water Jet Machining (AWJM) on banana fiber reinforced polyester composite. The composite is prepared with 20 wt. % of fiber through hand layup method followed by compression molding. Experiments are conducted to assess the influence of each input parameters on the output responses namely surface roughness (Ra) and kerf angle. The study is performed by varying the water pressure, traverse speed (TS), and standoff distance (SD). From the experiments, it is observed that the standoff distance contributes more on affecting Ra by 60.63% and kerf angle by 74.80%. The suitable cutting parameters are suggested for achieving quality output and the cut surface morphology is observed through Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images.

Keywords

• kerf angle
• standoff distance
• surface roughness
• traverse speed
• water pressure