ELECTROCHEMICAL MACHINING WITH ETHYLENE GLYCOL MIXED ELECTROLYTE ON INCONEL 718
Original scientific paper
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/CICEQ251005033GKeywords:
Ethylene glycol, Ceramic coating, Polyvinyl acetate, PROMETHEE II, Artificial neural networkAbstract
Electrochemical machining is a non-traditional machining process, especially for difficult-to-cut materials. An electrolyte was prepared with ethylene glycol (EG) 30 vol% and distilled water 70 vol% as a solution with the combination of NaNO3, and stainless steel electrodes coated with polyvinyl acetate (PVA) and commercially available ceramic paste. Inconel 718 was used as a workpiece material in this study. L9 orthogonal array (OA) experiments are conducted for both sodium nitrate (NaNO3) and EG+NaNO3 electrolyte. The process parameters are optimized using Preference Ranking Organisation Method of Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE II) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). According to the multi-criteria decision-making method, the optimal parameter combination of both electrolytes is stainless steel electrode at 9 V, 70% duty cycle, 28 g×L-1 electrolyte concentration and ceramic coated electrode at 13 V, 80% duty cycle, 28 g×L-1 electrolyte concentration. The results of PROMETHEE II were verified using the developed ANN architecture. ECM performance was significantly improved by adding EG to the sodium nitrate electrolyte. EG significantly improved the material removal efficiency by increasing the average machining rate (MR) by 69.70%. Concurrently, the diametral overcut (DOC) dropped by roughly 27.4%, indicating a significant improvement in dimensional accuracy. Only a slight rise of about 1.6% was seen in the surface corrosion factor (SCF), indicating that the addition of EG has no negative effects on surface integrity.
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