Feasibility and Optimization of Electrochemical Machining for 6061 Aluminum alloy

Abstract

The request depending on electrochemical machining (ECM) technique has progressed in a large scale according to different points of view such that; cost or energy consuming, environment protection, reliable performance etc. This work aims to predict and optimize ECM process parameters for important, economic and applicable material (6061 aluminum) by employing L9 Taguchi method as a design of experiment (DOE) approach. This has led to experimental designing, developing a mathematical model and optimizing the entire ECM operation. This was carried out by controlling the chosen process variables (voltage, flow rate speed and electrolyte concentration) in order to optimize and predict the responses namely material removal rate (MRR) and dissolution rate. ANOVA, 3D contour graphs and perturbation plots have been employed to identify the analysis of variance of each response as well as to show the significant model terms. The process parameters i.e. voltage, flow rate speed and electrolyte concentration have been ranged to be 15-25V, 8-12 l/min and 3.36-7 % respectively. In both cases of MRR and dissolution rate the voltage parameter has seen to be the prominent factor that affects the responses so as to investigate highest value of MRR and dissolution rate, 0.477 g/min and 2.149 mm/min, respectively. This has been confirmed due to the results obtained from the ANOVA analysis which shows maximum F-valu for the voltage in the MRR and dissolution rate such that; 921.91 and 1608.34 respectively. But, still there was a considerable enhancement in the MRR and dissolution rate due to the increment in the flow rate speed and electrolyte concentration. Model validation has been carried out and thus the results invistigated that all the considered models were adequate since the residuals in prediction of each response were ignored, because the residuals were semi-matched with the diagonal line. Optimizations of responses were performed in this work numerically by using two types of criteria (restricted and non-restricted). According to these criteria, important increment in the MRR can be obtained which reaches 37%. A considerable enhancement has been obtained in the dissolution rate due to the comparison between the two criteria which results in increment by around 11% as well.