Performance characteristics of abrasive water-jet machining on monel 400 using two different abrasive grain size

Corrosion is one of the most damaging and expensive natural striking problem in the field of engineering. Corrosion can result in the of weakening of the material, rise in fires, collapse of building, breakage of pipelines, leakage in chemical plant and many more. This leads to the use of corrosive resistive materials. A nickel-based alloy names “Monel 400” is one such material which is resistive to corrosion damage over a significant period. Use of Monel 400 is primarily in the field of marine, aerospace, oil and chemical environment due to its strong toughness over a high range of temperatures, work hardening properties and corrosive resistive characteristics. As machining on Monel is relatively tough, a non-conventional machining technique called “Abrasive waterjet machining” is followed to overcome the issue. Garnet sand is used as the abrasive with the size range varying from 80 to 85 mesh. Improvement of the parameters such as surface finish and circularity error were minimized using Monel 400 along with use of response surface model, various statistical formulations like ANOVA and regression equations. It was proved that water pressure and the flow rate of abrasive were the most inducing factors in the machining process from the derived results. Finally, the surface roughness and circularity error for mesh 85 and mesh 80 were derived and compared with the influencing parameters such as water pressure and rate of abrasive flow.