Surface integrity of abrasive water jet machined and post processed surfaces

Important results from the project

This project has explored a method for cleaning high energy machined surfaces. The proposed and evaluated method involves removing residual abrasives in the surface by means of the high-pressure water jet cleaning. The main goal of this work has been to optimize the topography. If the surface is too rough, there is a great risk of folding material when performing the final shot peening operation. This investigation is essential as these properties greatly affect the fatigue properties of the manufactured component.

Expected long term effects

The retrieved results show that the water jet travers speed, water jet pressure and nozzle distance have great impact upon the resulting erosion and surface topography. The final recipe show that a suitable overlap of the waterjet beam will generate an improver topography, but this need to be balanced on the nozzle distance, travers speed and water jet pressure. The results from this project will be a useful input when selected the processing route for post processing of high energy machined surface.

Approach and implementation

The investigations in this project was essentially divided int two main activities. One concerning development of knowledge of the interaction of process parameters and resulting erosion from individual erosion track. This was realized though design of experiment investigation of the processing parameters. The other activity concerns increased knowledge regarding how an improver topography could be achieved by an overlap strategy. This was done by evaluation of different setting of overlaps for cleaning.