Abrasive waterjet cutting (AWJC) is a non-traditional machining process employed to handle stronger materials. Inconel 718 alloy is a material which is difficult to handle by traditional machining process. The present work is focused towards studying the surface roughness and kerf width obtained in AWJC of Inconel 718 alloy. The abrasive waterjet parameters like the water pressure, feed rate and abrasive flow rate are included in experimentation. The quality characteristics are observed for the various combinations of the cutting parameters designed by Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array. Desirability analysis is employed for predicting the optimal setting of AWJC parameters and analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed to identify the contribution of various parameters in affecting the responses. The confirmation experiment is also conducted to validate the proposed approach.  

Keywords: Abrasive waterjet cutting; Inconel 718; Surface roughness; Kerf width; Desirability analysis; ANOVA.