International Journal of Lightweight Materials and Manufacture (Dec 2022)
Micro-drill on Al/SiC composite by EDD process: An RSM-MOGOA based hybrid approach
Abstract
The development in technology developed new materials such as composites. These composites can be developed by different techniques. But the processing of these composites exhibits many challenges due to hard reinforcements. The recent work used the stir casting technique to develop the Al/SiC composite. After that, the machinability of the developed composite was checked with the electric discharge drilling. The microholes of diameter 1.5 mm were made on the developed composite. The experiments were designed using Response Surface Methodology based Box-Behnken design. According to the available drilling parameters (discharge current, pulse on-time, and pulse off-time) and their level, for each experiment overall, fifteen experiments were performed, and the tool wear rate (TWR) and material removal rate (MRR) were evaluated. After that, empirical models were developed for MRR and TWR, which were further solved by the Multi-objective Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm (MOGOA). It was observed that the predicted solutions suggested by MOGOA produce excellent results reproducibility. A small amount of burr formation was observed at the optimized setting. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) has been performed to determine the elements in the drilled composite.