Effect of Process Parameters on the Surface Roughness and Kerf Width of Mild Steel during Plasma Arc Cutting Using Response Surface Methodology

This study investigated the effects of process parameters of plasma arc cutting (PAC) of low carbon steel material using analysis of variance. Three process parameters, cutting speed, cutting current and gas pressure were considered and experiments were conducted based on response surface methodology (RSM) via the box-Behnken approach. Process responses viz. surface roughness (Ra) and kerf width of cut surface were measured for each experimental run. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed to get the contribution of process parameters on responses. Cutting current has the most significant effect of 33.43% on the surface roughness and gas pressure has the most significant effect on  kerf width of  41.99% . For minimum surface roughness and minimum kerf width, process parameters were optimized using the RSM. Keywords: Cutting speed, cutting current, gas pressure,   surface roughness, kerf widt