Abstract:
Aluminium (Al) alloys in aircraft applications requires the use of advanced machining process, which includes Electric Discharge Machining (EDM) for fabrication of aircraft mechanical structures. However, optimization of the parameters of Al is required to avoid variations, which tend to affect the Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Surface Roughness (SR) of machining quality. In this paper, parametric EDM optimization is carried out on Al 8090 using a meta-heuristic algorithm called Mouth Brooding Fish (MBF) algorithm. The Al 8090is used to fabricate the metal matrix composites that consists of an activated charcoal with different reinforcement percentage. The parameters considered for optimization includes peak current, pulse-on and off and Response Surface Method (RSM). The Box–Behnken design is used to implement the RSM through mathematical derivations of Tool Wear Rate (TWR), MRR, and Material Hole Roundness (MHR). Several iterations are established to improve the accuracy of the model. The Al 8090 alloys are tested for Hardness, Density, Ultimate tensile strength and Impact Strength. These methods yields best samples and machining process is performed on it in EDM. Several experiments are carried out using RSM and observations are carried out. The quality of alloys are evaluated in terms of SR and MRR. The optimal solution of MBF is found using weighted sum method with multi-objective function. The optimal results provides the solutions for optimal parametric combination with maximum MRR and minimum SR values. The results of ANOVA analysis proved that the servo speed creates a greater influence to determine the quality of EDM. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed using confirmatory experiments.
