Comparative analysis for the prediction of WEDM responses for machining spark plasma sintered boron carbide ceramic sample by RSM and ANFIS

Unconventional wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process is successfully used to cut different metals, alloys, composites and recent addition is engineered ceramics which possess sufficient electrical conductivity. Boron carbide is one of the hardest ceramic materials that unable to be processed with conventional machine tools and can be machined by WEDM compulsorily with proper selection of machine parameters. This study is based on boron carbide samples which were prepared using spark plasma sintering (SPS) furnace and machined with WEDM. Five machining parameters were analyzed such as pulse on time, pulse off time, peak current, water pressure and servo feed rate. Surface roughness (R-a) and machining speed were considered as output parameters and design of experiment was derived using central composite design (CCD) of response surface method (RSM) with 32 numbers of different test runs. Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was used with a new set of 16 numbers of experiments to predict results and seen to be more reliable than predicted results of response surface method. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

WEDM process optimization of sintered structural ceramic sample by using fuzzy-MPCI technique

Sintered boron carbide is an extremely hard, structural ceramic material and it is difficult to be machined with conventional techniques. To overcome the machining problem, the spark plasma sintered (SPS) monolithic boron carbide (B4C) was successfully machined by wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) as the material is electrically conductive. The effects of five different machining parameters of WEDM were carefully observed to check their effect on the useful responses, namely machining speed and surface roughness (R-a) for cutting sintered B4C samples. A number of experimental operations were derived by using the concept of central composite design (CCD) and fuzzy logic was implemented to predict the response for a particular input parameter set. Also, a multi objective optimization was performed by fuzzy logic rule based multi performance characteristics indices technique (MPCI). (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Wire electrical discharge machining and microstructural analysis of hot-pressed boron carbide

Boron carbide powder was hot-pressed at 2070 degrees C with 30 MPa uniaxial pressure and 90 min soaking. The mechanical, microstructure and other related properties were evaluated. XRD of the boron carbide powder and sintered samples, shows the presence of B13C2 phase of high electrical conductivity. Crystal lattice parameters, space group, cell angle, cell parameters, etc. were found from Rietveld refinement. The micro Vicker's hardness was 26.98 +/- 0.98 GPa at 4.9 N load, fracture toughness 3.54 +/- 0.26 MPa/Mt and Young's modulus 461.50 +/- 4.5 GPa. The hot-pressed boron carbide was found to be electrically conducting, which can be machined using a wire electrical discharge machine (WEDM)