Taguchi technique for modeling material removal rate in ultrasonic machining of titanium

Titanium and its alloys have many potential engineering applications for manufacturing industry. Now day's there is a critical need for cost-effective machining processes for this material. Not much work hither to been reported for machining of titanium with ultrasonic machining process. In this paper, a Taguchi approach to model the material removal rate during ultrasonic machining of titanium and its alloys has been proposed and applied. Relationships between material removal rate and other controllable machining parameters (power rating; tool type; slurry concentration; slurry type; slurry temperature and slurry size) have been deduced by using Taguchi technique. The Taguchi design results suggested that Ultrasonic power rating significantly improves the material removal rate with contribution of 28%, followed by type of tool with contribution of 24.6%. The third significant factor was type of slurry with contribution of 13.3%. The comparison with experimental results will also serve as future validation of the model. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.