Abrasive Water Jet Machining - A Review on Current Development

Abrasive waterjet machining (AWJM) is one of the modern machining process for difficult to cut materials. It is an environment friendly and relatively inexpensive process with reasonably high material removal rate. In all the machining processes the quality of the work piece is depends on various design parameters. The process parameters which mainly affect the quality of cutting in AWJM are Hydraulic pressure, traverse speed, stand-off distance, abrasive flow rate types of abrasive, etc., The quality parameters considered in AWJM are Material Removal Rate (MRR), Surface Roughness (SR), Depth of Cut, kerf Characteristics and Nozzle wear. Because of its varied advantages it is gaining more importance in recent time. Various statistical and modern approaches are applied to optimize these process parameters to improve the performance characteristics. But most of the authors considered common process parameters like hydraulic pressure, traverse speed, stand-off distance and abrasive flow rate. Other parameters can also be considered for optimization, which influence the quality parameters. In the present paper an attempt is made to review the research work carried out so far in the area of AWJM.