Due to heterogeneous and anisotropic structure of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites, their machining is really a challenging task, causing delamination damage, heat generation, tool wear, poor surface finish etc. In this paper, abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) is carried out on CFRP composite laminates, with water pressure (WP), traverse speed (TS), abrasive flow rate (AFR) and stand-off distance (SOD) as the input parameters, and surface roughness (SR), material removal rate (MRR) and kerf width (KW) as the outputs. The consequences of those AWJM parameters on the outputs are studied through main effects plots and analysis of variance, which identify completely disparate settings of the considered AWJM parameters for obtaining lower SR and KW, and higher MRR values. This process is subsequently optimized using four distance-based multi-criteria decision making methods, e.g. technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS), combinative distance-based assessment (CODAS) and stable preference ordering towards ideal solution (SPOTIS). Amongst them, TOPSIS and SPOTIS identify WP = 340 MPa, TS = 500 mm/min, AFR = 225 g/min and SOD = 2 mm; and EDAS and CODAS pick out WP = 250 MPa, TS = 500 mm/min, AFR = 225 g/min and SOD = 2 mm as the best parametric combinations. These two settings marginally differ with respect to WP setting. A detailed sensitivity analysis reveals robustness of EDAS method being least affected by varying criteria weights.
Shunmugesh et al. (Wed,) studied this question.