ANALYTICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE WORKPIECE DURING AN ABRASIVE WATERJET MACHINING PROCESS

Temperature distributions in a block-type workpiece during cutting with an abrasive waterjet (AWJ) was studied analytically/experimentally. The experiments included measurement of detailed time-temperature distributions in the workpiece for selected AWJ/workpiece operational parameters. Mathematical modeling of the problem made use of a two-part process. In the first part, the measured experimental data were fed into an inverse heat conduction algorithm which determined the corresponding heat flux in the workpiece.* In the second part, this heat flux was fed into a two-dimensional transient heat conduction model that calculated the corresponding temperature distributions in the workpiece. Comparison of the model predicted results with those of the experiments will outline the characteristics of temperature distributions in the workpiece and the applicability/limitations of the model at its current stage.