Abrasive water jet cutting process can produce tapered edges on cutting kerf. This problem can limit the applications of abrasive water jet cutting process and in some cases it is necessary another edge preparation process. In this paper, an experimental investigation kerf characteristics of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy under abrasive water jet cutting is presented. In this regards, it is shown how to use the hybrid approach of Taguchi method and principal component analysis to optimize abrasive water jet cutting are used in this paper. The abrasive water jet cutting process input parameters effect on material removal rate and the characteristics of the surface. A considerable effort was made in understanding the influence of the system operational process parameters such as water jet pressure, traverse speed, abrasive flow rate, and standoff distance. Due to appropriate selecting abrasive water jet cutting process parameters leads to optimizing of kerf characteristics include top kerf width, kerf tapper and kerf deviation, therefore it is important to select appropriate input parameters. The obtained results from this method show that the hybrid approach of Taguchi method and principal component analysis is a suitable solution for optimizing of abrasive water jet cutting process.

Keywords: Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy, Abrasive water jet cutting, Taguchi method, Principal component analysis, Optimization

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