A Review on Current Research Trends in Abrasive Water Jet Machining

Abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) is one of the non conventional machining process for difficult to cut brittle, hard and thin materials. The process parameters which are mainly influence the quality of machining in AWJM are water pressure, stand-off distance, nozzle diameter, traverse speed, abrasive flow rate and abrasive size. This is an environment friendly and relatively inexpensive process with reasonably high material removal rate. The quality parameters considered in AWJM are kerf Characteristics, Surface Roughness (SR), Material Removal Rate (MRR), Nozzle wear and Depth of Cut. Various mathematical models and modern approaches are applied to optimize process parameters there by improve the performance characteristics. In the present paper an attempt is made to review the research work carried out so far in the area of AWJM.