The Influence of the Feed Rate on the Quality of Surfaces Processed by AWJ at High Pressures

Abrasive water jet processing is one of the newest unconventional technologies. It can be used to cut different metallic materials (steel, titanium alloys, aluminium alloys, brass) or nonmetallic materials (wood, plastics, glass, stone, granite etc.). Therefore, this technology can be successfully applied in different industries as: food industry, wood industry, aeronautic industry, automobile industry, mining industry. Between the advantageous of abrasive water jet processing technology it is worth noticing the following: it is rapid, very small processing forces are generated, it is silent, no thermal distortions occur. The aim of the current paper was to determine the influence of the feed rate on the quality of surfaces processed by AWJ at high pressure. The parameters that quantified the quality of the processed surface were those defined in the ISO/WD/TC 44 N 1770 standard: width of the processed surface at the jet inlet (Li), width of the processed surface at the jet outlet (Lo), deviation from perpendicularity (u), inclination angle (alpha) and roughness (Ra).