Investigation of the Impact of the Alumina Powder Presence in Dielectric on Electrical Discharge Machining Parameters of A413 Aluminum Workpiece using Taguchi's Experiment Design, Signal-to-noise Analysis, and Total Normalized Quality Loss

This study aimed to scrutinize the impact of the electrical discharge machining (EDM) parameters of A413 alloy for two cases of dielectric, one with alumina powder and one without, using Taguchi's experiment design method. The completed studies regarding the EDM of the metal-base composites reveal that insufficient research work has been carried out on this composite material. In this research, by using Taguchi's experiment design and through the simultaneous analysis of Total Normalized Quality Loss (TNQL) and Signal-to-Noise ratio (S/N) of the outputs, the impacts of the current intensity, voltage, pulse on-time, and pulse off-time on the material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (SR), and tool wear rate (TWR) were investigated. The results showed that the use of 3g/L of alumina powder in kerosene dielectric averagely led to a 6.47%, 9.14%, and 19.40% reduction in MRR, SR, and TWR, respectively. Also, the results acquired using TNQL and S/N analyses demonstrated that the optimum experiment was composed of the third level of voltage (A3), the first level of current (B1), the first level of pulse on-time (C1), and the third level of pulse-off time (D3). It was concluded that the current intensity had the greatest impact on the MRR and SR. However, the pulse-on time had the greatest influence on the TWR. It was also observed that the MRR declined by adding 3g/L aluminum oxide powder in the kerosene dielectric which in turn caused a reduction in the SR and the TWR compared to the case of the kerosene dielectric without powder.