Optimization of Material Removal Rate in Electrical Discharge Machining Using Fuzzy Logic

The objective of present work is to stimulate the machining of material by electrical discharge machining (EDM) to give effect of input parameters like discharge current (Ip), pulse on time (Ton), pulse off time (Toff) which can bring about changes in the output parameter, i.e. material removal rate. Experimental data was gathered from die sinking EDM process using copper electrode and Medium Carbon Steel (AISI 1040) as work-piece. The rules of membership function (MF) and the degree of closeness to the optimum value of the MMR are within the upper and lower range of the process parameters. It was found that proposed fuzzy model is in close agreement with the experimental results. By Intelligent, model based design and control of EDM process parameters in this study will help to enable dramatically decreased product and process development cycle times.

Authors:

• Amit Kohli
• Aashim Wadhwa
• Tapan Virmani
• Ujjwal Jain

Keywords:

• Electrical discharge Machining (EDM)
• Fuzzy Logic
• Material removal rate (MRR)
• Membership functions (MF).

References:

[1] Ho, K.H., Newman, S.T., 2003 "State of the art electrical discharge
machining (EDM)", International Journal of Machine Tools and
Manufacturing, Vol 43, pp 1287-1300
[2] Luis, C.J., Puertas, I., Villa, G., 2005 "Material removal rate and
electrode wear study on the EDM of silicon carbide", Journal of
Materials Processing Technology, Vol 164-165, pp 889-896
[3] Naotake Mohria, Yasushi Fukuzawab, Takayuki Tanic, Nagao Saitoa
and Katsushi Furutani. Assisting Electrode Method for Machining
Insulating Ceramics. CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology. Vol
45, Issue 1, 1996, pp 201-204.
[4] Y.H. Liu, X.P. Lia, R.J. Jia, L.L. Yua, H.F. Zhanga and Q.Y. Li. Effect
of technological parameter on the process performance for electric
discharge milling of insulating Al2O3 ceramic. Journal of Materials
Processing Technology. Vol 208, Issues 1-3, 2008, pp 245-250.
[5] Frans Van Dijck. Physico-mathematical analysis of the electro discharge
machining process. PhD Thesis Katholieke University te Leuven. 1973.
[6] Schumacher, B.M., 2004 "After 60 years of EDM, the discharge process
remains still disputed. Journal of Materials Processing Technology",
Vol 149, pp 376-381
[7] Kuneida, M., Lauwers, B., Rajurkar, K.P., Schumacher, B.M., 2005
"Advancing EDM through fundamental insight into the process", Annals
of CIRP, Vol 54 issue 2, pp 599-622.
[8] Marafona, J.; Chousal, A.G., 2006 "A finite element model of EDM
based on the Joule effect", International Journal of Machine Tools and
Manufacturing, Vol 46, issue 6, pp 595-602
[9] Lin, J.L., Wang, K.S., Yan, B.H., Tarng, Y.S., 2000, "Optimization of
the electrical discharge machining process based on the Taguchi method
with fuzzy logics", Journal of Materials Processing Technology, Vol
102, pp 48-55.
[10] Tzeng, Y.F., Chen, F.C., 2003, "A simple approach for robust design of
high-speed electrical discharge machining technology", International
Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacturing, Vol 43,issue 3, pp 217-
227.
[11] Marafona, J., Wykes, C., 2000, "A new method of optimizing material
removal rate using EDM with copper tungsten electrodes", International
Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacturing, Vol 40, issue 2, pp 153-
164.
[12] www.triz-journal.com/archives/2009/06/02/ cited at 18/08/2012