Abstract:

An abrasive water jet machining model was created to simulatethe whole stage from the jet into the nozzle to the work piece material removal process using the ALE (Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler) algorithm. The mesh for the abrasive and water was based on the ALE formulation, while the Lagrangeformulation was applied to the target mesh. The effect of jet penetration was implemented by coupling the grids of the ALE and Lagrange. The jet traverse speed was achieved by definitionof the movement of the ALE grid to reduce the mesh domain. The abrasive constitutive equations were also presented. The uniform mixture for abrasive and water wasachieved by definition of volume percentage of the two materials in the initialALE elements. Simulation results gave the relationships between processing parameters and the cutting depth. The good agreement between simulation results and experimental data verifies the correctness of the simulation.

Key words: abrasive water jet; finite element; abrasive constitutive model; fluid-solid coupling