Experimental Investigation of MHD Convection in ECDM Process for Microchannel Fabrication
摘要
The microchannel is required for several applications of aerospace and optical industries, which are usually fabricated on non-conducting material, specifically with glass. Multiple techniques are available for this micro-fabrication, but ECDM is preferred due to minor thermal damages. Significant effort has been completed earlier in ECDM to set the input parameters, which explain discharge parameters but cannot precisely govern the hydrodynamic region, which is essential for deep microchannel fabrication. Voltage and concentration variation only change the amount of discharge energy. Still, it does not impact bubble accumulation and film thickness phenomena that are equally essential for deep micro-fabrication. The bubble departure radius and gas film thickness are responsible for the discharge frequency since the lower the film thickness, the higher the discharge rate. The literature reveals that sonification, rotation, and magnetic flux may control bubble accumulation and gas film thickness. Few works have been done to elaborate on the role of MHD on the performance characteristics of ECDM. This work discusses the experimental investigation of magnetohydrodynamic convection (MHD) convection due to Lorentz force during microchannel manufacturing. Experiments were conducted on an electrochemical discharge machining setup developed in-house. MRR and WOC were considered output parameters. Various metaheuristic algorithms, i.e., PSO, DE, and TLBO, were applied to find the optimum value of the response parameters. The optimum values of MRR and WOC are 0.21272 mg/s and 0.01342 mm obtained.