Performance optimization of water-jet assisted underwater laser cutting of AISI 304 stainless steel sheet

Recent development of water-jet assisted underwater laser cutting has shown some advantages over the gas assisted underwater laser cutting, as it produces much less turbulence, gas bubble and aerosols, resulting in a more gentle process. However, this process has relatively low efficiency due to different losses in water. Scattering is reported to be a dominant loss mechanism, which depends on the growth of vapor layer at cut front and its removal by water-jet. Present study reports improvement in process efficiency by reducing the scattering loss using modulated laser power. Judicious control of laser pulse on- and off-time could improve process efficiency through restricting the vapor growth and its effective removal by water-jet within the laser on- and off-time, respectively. Effects of average laser power, duty cycle and modulation frequency on specific energy are studied to get an operating zone for maximum efficiency. Next, the variation in laser cut quality with different process parameters are studied within this operating zone using Design of experiment (DOE). Response surface methodology (RSM) is used by implementing three level Box-Behnken design to optimize the variation in cut quality, and to find out the optimal process parameters for desired quality. Various phenomena and material removal mechanism involved in this process are also discussed.