Electric Discharge Machining of Aluminium Silicon-Carbide Composite and Optimization of Process Parameters
Abstract
Aluminium metal matrix composites are hard to machine due to the bonding properties of the base and the reinforced ceramic materials. Electric discharge machining is one of the common and effective methods for machining such materials. The present work is to study the effect of pulse duration, peak current and the electrode gap on Metal Removal Rate (MRR), Tool Wear Ratio (TWR) and Radial Over Cut (ROC) on electric discharge machining of aluminium silicon carbide composites of various compositions 3%, 6% and 9%. The experiment was carried out using copper electrode of 3.4 mm diameter. Taguchi L9 orthogonal array was considered for analysing the results. Statistical models based on experiments are used for optimising the parameters for EDM for this experiment.