Title: The role of polymeric additives in water jet cutting

Authors: Massimiliano Annoni, Michele Monno, Volfango Bertola, Massimo Goletti

Addresses: Dipartimento di Meccanica – Politecnico di Milano, Via La Masa, 1 I-20156 Milano, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Meccanica – Politecnico di Milano, Via La Masa, 1 I-20156 Milano, Italy. ' School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JL, UK. ' Consorzio Musp, Laboratorio Macchine Utensili e Sistemi di Produzione, Capannone Autonomo – Loc. le Mose I-29100 Piacenza, Italy

Abstract: The use of additives in water jet (WJ) applications is known since 1970 when Franz (1970) outlined the effect of improved coherence due to additives as a method to increase depth penetration of a WJ. A number of publications exist in literature although a comprehensive study of the different additives effects is not available so far. Early studies (Franz, 1972; Kudin et al., 1973; Zakin and Summers, 1976) point out how the WJ cutting performance is enhanced by certain additives, however, the application of drag-reducing additives to abrasive water jet (AWJ) technology is not well-developed and understood, especially in case of injected jets (Hollinger et al., 1989; Hashish, 1997; Howells, 1999; Louis et al., 2003). The aim of the present study is to develop an injection system suitable to give a quantitative assessment of the effect of various types of additives on the WJ cutting capability. In particular, such system has been applied to investigate the main effects of a polymeric additive in case of WJ machining under a technological point of view (jet behaviour and cutting performance).

Keywords: abrasive waterjet machining; AWJ additives; polymers; drag reduction; depth penetration; polymeric additives; jet behaviour; cutting performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMM.2009.027329

International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials, 2009 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.285 - 304

Published online: 20 Jul 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article