Electrical Discharge Machining of Cu-Al2O3 Metal Matrix Composites

Abstract

In today’s scenario, MMCs are widely used in the manufacturing industries mainly in aerospace, automotive and electronics engineering due to its excellent mechanical and thermal properties as compared to conventional materials. But conventional machining process have been found difficulties in machining of these composites due to the due high tool wear, poor surface roughness, high machining cost etc. Hence, various researchers highlights the different advanced machining process such as electro discharge machining process, electro chemical machining process and electro or laser beam machining process in order to get effective machining for these composites. In this dissertation, EDM has been applied in order to machine Cu-Al2O3 metal matrix composite to obtain the high product quality with improved yield performance. Taguchi has been implemented to framework the layout of the experiment. The machining parameters such as current, voltage and pulse on time are taken whereas machining evaluation characteristics have been taken as material removal rate, tool wear rate and surface roughness. The work also adopted grey relation analysis to convert the aforesaid evaluation characteristics into a single response i.e. overall grey relation grade. Finally, Taguchi has been used to evaluate the optimal parametric combination.