Modelling of Abrasive Waterjet Machining: A New Approach

Abrasive waterjet (AWJ) machining is one of the recent non-traditional methods starting to be used widely in industry for material removal of different materials. The cutting performance of AWJ is achieved by a very high speed, small-scale erosion process. In this paper, a modified form of Finnie's model for erosion is developed for application to AWJ. This modified form is able to deal with curved surfaces rather than flat surfaces only. Furthermore, the new modelling approach is capable of simulating multiple particle erosion. This approach uses standard material properties and requires no calibration constants. The modelled results agreed well with both experimental and analytical data.