Analysis of Machining Parameters in Wire EDM with Aluminum Alloy Using PCA and TOPSIS Approach

Abstract

Although the efficiency of traditional cutting processes is inadequate by the mechanical properties of the processed material and the intricacy of the work piece geometry, electrical discharge machining (EDM) being a thermal erosion process, is subject to no such limitations. This paper summaries the suitable use of Taguchi’s L₂₇ orthogonal array which takes 27 experimental runs to develop a mathematical model for correlating the interactive and higher order impacts of various electrical discharge machining parameters through principal component analysis (PCA) coupled with technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), utilizing relevant experimental data as obtained through experimentation. In this study, working voltage (WV), working current (WC), oil pressure (OP), pulse on time (PT) and pulse of time (POT) on material removal rate (MRR), volumetric electrode wear (VEW) and electrode wear ratio (EWR) has been studied. In the applied methodology, a closeness coefficient is obtained to solve the EDM process with the multiple performance characteristics. The adequacies of the above the proposed models have been tested through the analysis of variance (ANOVA). Finally, confirmation tests were performed to sort a comparison between the experimental results and predicted values. Experimental results have shown that machining performance in the process can be improved efficiently by using this approach.