Wear analysis of abrasive waterjet nozzle using suprathreshold stochastic resonance technique

Abstract

The performance of an abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) process is mainly dependent on the jet diameter, which is prone to change with time due to the nozzle wear. The present study is aimed to monitor the nozzle wear during operation using vibrational spectrum. Experiments are conducted with four focusing nozzles of different diameters under same parameters considering water and water-abrasive mixture as the jet. The obtained vibration spectrum through an accelerometer and data acquisition system are analyzed by Suprathreshold Stochastic Resonance (SSR) technique using MATLAB. The results obtained shows that SSR technique is easy to implement and gives a better performance in monitoring and analyzing the wear severity.