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Research Papers: Materials and Fabrication

Trends and Cost Analysis of AWJ Operation at $600MPa$ Pressure

[+] Author and Article Information
Mohamed Hashish

Flow International Corporation, 23500 64th Avenue South, Kent, WA 98032

J. Pressure Vessel Technol 131(2), 021410 (Jan 27, 2009) (7 pages) doi:10.1115/1.3008033 History: Received June 26, 2007; Revised May 19, 2008; Published January 27, 2009

Abstract

Increasing the pressure of abrasive waterjet, while fixing the jet power, increases the jet’s power density and thus the cutting speed may increase. This was observed for steel, aluminum, and stone cutting. It was also observed that the kerf taper is less for higher pressure jets. Increasing the pressure while keeping the jet diameter fixed will increase both the power and the power density. This will result in increased cutting speed and less taper. The operating cost of the abrasive waterjets process consists mainly of the costs of abrasives, nozzle wear, utility, and maintenance of equipment. The cost per unit length of material (specific cost) is determined based on the cutting speed. It was found that the main advantage of increasing pressure is increasing the cutting speed or reducing the abrasive consumption per unit time or unit length of cut. The highest savings are obtained when the speed is maximized by increasing the pressure and the abrasive flow rate. Several study cases were addressed in this paper using assumptions and simple models to generalize the analysis. The analysis indicates that increasing the pressure from $400MPato600MPa$ may result in cost per unit length saving of over 30%.

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Figures

Figure 1

Top, bottom, and side views of a cut sample

Figure 2

Taper in 0.25in. thick aluminum at 400MPa and 600MPa

Figure 3

Taper in 0.5in. thick aluminum at 400MPa and 600MPa

Figure 4

Cutting data for 0.25in. aluminum

Figure 5

Cutting data for 2.0in. thick aluminum

Figure 6

Trail back in 2in. thick steel

Figure 11

Effect of UHP maintenance cost on cost per unit length for different speeds—Case 3

Figure 13

General trend of percentage speed increase as a function of percentage pressure increase

Figure 14

General trend of percentage speed increase as a function of percent pressure increase

Figure 15

Effect of pressure percentage change in speed and cost per unit length for two cases

Figure 16

Comparison of different case studies

Figure 12

Effect of abrasive flow rate on speed and cost per unit length at 600MPa

Figure 10

Effect of UHP maintenance cost on cost per unit length for different speeds—Case 2

Figure 9

Effect of UHP maintenance cost on cost per unit length for different speeds—Case 1

Figure 8

Effect of speed on cost for fixed orifice and abrasive flow rate

Figure 7

Kerf taper in 2in. thick steel

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