Comprehensive Evaluation of Abrasive Water Jet Machining of Fiber Reinforced Polymers

The machining process of carbon fiber reinforced polymers is significant and the researchers are continually working to achieve the better machining qualities. There are numerous issues with the machining abilities of traditional machining techniques for fiber reinforced polymers because of heterogeneous and anisofropic properties of FRP materials. Advanced manufacturing processes such as laser beam, ultrasonic, EDM, water jet and abrasive water jet machining are the alternatives to the conventional making process. Based on the research carried out abrasive water jet machining process is found as the most favorable method. The abrasive water jet machining offers advantages as high speed cutting, no thermal damages and dust free cutting. On the other hand, it also suffers from the challenges like delamination, kerf size and surface quality. This study has presented these challenges in an interesting manner. These challenges can be addressed by controlling the input parameters such as cutting speed, jet pressure, standoff distance, feed rate, type of abrasive used, the abrasive mass flow rate. The effect of these input parameters on the delamination, kerf size and surface quality is included comprehensively in this work. The optimized controlled machining can eliminate or reduce these undesirable effects during the machining of fiber reinforced polymers.