Multiphase Flow and Wear in the Cutting Head of Ultra-high Pressure Abrasive Water Jet

Abrasive water jet cutting technology is widely applied in the materials processing today and attracts great attention from scholars, but many phenomena concerned are not well understood, especially in the internal jet flow of the cutting head at the condition of ultra-high pressure. The multiphase flow in the cutting head is numerically simulated to study the abrasive motion mechanism and wear inside the cutting head at the pressure beyond 300 MPa. Visible predictions of the particles trajectories and wear rate in the cutting head are presented. The influences of the abrasive physical properties, size of the jewel orifice and the operating pressure on the trajectories are discussed. Based on the simulation, a wear experiment is carried out under the corresponding pressures. The simulation and experimental results show that the flow in the mixing chamber is composed of the jet core zone and the disturbance zone, both affect the particles trajectories. The mixing efficiency drops with the increase of the abrasive granularity. The abrasive density determines the response of particles to the effects of different flow zones, the abrasive with medium density gives the best general performance. Increasing the operating pressure or using the jewel with a smaller orifice improves the coherency of p articles trajectories but increases the wear rate of the jewel holder at the same time. Walls of the jewel holder, the entrance of the mixing chamber and the convergence part of the mixing tube are subject to wear out. The computational and experimental results give a qualitative consistency which proves that this numerical method can provide a reliable and visible cognition of the flow characteristics of ultra-high pressure abrasive water jet. The investigation is benefit for improving the machining properties of water jet cutting systems and the optimization design of the cutting head.

Cutting Characteristics of Force Controllable Milling Head

In order to control cutting force and its direction i n milling operation, a new milling head was developed. The head has two milling cutters, which are connected by a pair of gears and rotate in opposite direction respectively. Both up-cut and down-cut can be carried out simultaneously by t hese milling cutters. The each depth of cut, the ratio of up/down cutting depth , by these cutters can be also selected. The cutting force characteristics were experimentally discussed by changing the ratio. The cutting force and its locus can be also changed by the selection of the ratio of up/down cutting depth. For practical usage of the head the analytical prediction method of the cutting forc e characteristics under selected cutting condition was proposed based on the ene rgy approach method proposed, in which both of cutting force characteristics of a single milling cutter and the combined milling cutter under a selected up/dow n cutting depth ratio were analytically estimated based on the two dimensional c utting data. It was experimentally shown that in NC milling machine the cutting force locus was controlled in pre-determined direction under various tool paths .