PROCESS PARAMETERS MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION OF WIRE ELECTRIC DISCHARGE MACHINING.

Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is a widely accepted non-traditional material removal process used to manufacture components with intricate shapes and profiles. Due to many parameters and the complex and stochastic nature of the process, achieving the optimal performance is a very difficult task. The objective of this present work is therefore to discover the relationship between the performance measures of the process and its controllable input parameters and subsequently to find the optimal combination of the input parameters to achieve the maximum process performance. A mathematical model using response surface modeling (RSM) approach is developed for correlating the inter-relationships of various wire electric discharge machining (WEDM) parameters with performance measures. A non-traditional optimization technique, known as particle swarm optimization (PSO), is then applied to find the optimal combination of process parameters with an objective to achieve maximum machining speed for a desired value of surface finish. It is observed that the results of optimization obtained by using PSO algorithm show significant improvement over those obtained using traditional optimization technique. Also the results obtained are in good agreement with those obtained through practical experimentation. The mathematical model developed in this work will help the practitioners to simulate the process performance on any WEDM machine. Moreover, the optimization using PSO algorithm will help EDM users to achieve significant improvement in process performance than by using traditional optimization algorithms and handbook recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]