Trends and Cost Analysis of AWJ Operation at 600MPa Pressure

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%.