JOURNAL OF THE NIGERIAN INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
MARCH, 2021 VOL 10 NO 1 ISSN 2141-2987
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ABSTRACT:
Owing to its corrosion resistance capability, stainless steel stands out as a material of
choice in food processing and other allied industries. However, cutting, during
manufacturing activities, poses enormous challenge with regular thermal cutting
processes. This study has optimized plasma arc cutting process of AISI 304 stainless
steel using a full factorial experimental design. The input process parameters were
Cutting Speed (CS), Cutting Current (CC) and Gas Pressure (GP) while the response
variables were Material Removal Rate (MRR) and surface roughness. Analysis of
Variance (ANOVA) was performed in order to identify the effect of each input
process parameters on the response variables. ANOVA revealed that whereas CS
made 31.1% contribution to surface roughness of the stainless steel, CC and GP only
contributed as much as 31.7% and 28.2% respectively. CC had the most significant
effect of 36.07% on MRR followed by GP and CS with 28.02% and 27.11%
respectively. While the optimal cutting conditions for surface roughness were found
to be 4000 mm/m for CS, 80 A for CC and 6 bar for GP, the optimal values for MRR
were 4000 mm/m, 60 A and 6 bar for SC, CC and GP respectively. It can, therefore,
be concluded that increase in cutting current favours increased material removal rate
during plasma arc cutting processes of AISI 304 stainless steel.
KEYWORDS: Cutting speed, Cutting current, Gas pressure, Material removal rate,
Surface roughness
