Enhancing material removal of TACAFM process through improved electrode geometry

The continuous melting and erosion of centrifugal force generating electrode is a major challenge in Thermal Additive Centrifugal Abrasive Flow Machining (TACAFM) process, which is a latest hybrid of abrasive flow machining process (AFM). The straight spline electrode is difficult to fabricate and need to be replaced after fixed number of cycle which hamper the machining effectiveness. To overcome this issue, a novel square-shaped electrode is proposed in this investigation which is easy to fabricate. ANSYS Fluent is used to analyse flow parameters' effect, and experimental validation is done using artificial neural network (ANN) optimisation. The input parameters for the experimentation were the supply current, rotational Speed and the number of extrusions whose effects were studied on material removal (MR) and percentage improvement in the surface finish (%∆R_a). The experimental results validate the simulation results with average experimental value of MR being 9.76 mg and that for %∆R_a is 42.12 percent with the corresponding predicted value of 9.75 mg and 42.13 percent obtained from ANN modelling. The proposed electrode justifies its suitability with the TACAFM process with the cumulative average percentage absolute error of 0.24 percent for MR and 0.13 percent for %∆R_a. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results justify the machining process with the spark generation.