A Review on the Usage of Different Optimization Techniques for Wire Electro Discharge Machining of Stainless Steels

Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is a non-traditional metal cutting procedure and the overall cutting process is contactless between the wire and work material. A plasma channel is created by the electrical energy between work piece and wire, which convert the electrical energy into thermal energy and the temperature rises (8000°C to 12000°C). Due to this mechanism, metal is melted from the upper surface of work piece. Generally difficult to machine material is used to cut in WEDM. However, stainless steel (SS) is one of them, it is a metal alloy, which is mixed with steel and other elements such as chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo), silicon (Si), carbon (C), nitrogen (N2), and manganese (Mn) etc. SS has some excellent properties, such as high durability, high tensile strength, and corrosion resistant etc. Due to these properties SS is mainly used in automobile industries, biogas tank, combustion chamber and petrochemical industries etc. The present paper discussed about the machining of different SS grades in WEDM and effect of several input parameters (such as pulse on time (Ton), pulse off time (Toff), servo voltage (SV), wire feed (WF) etc.) on response parameters (such as material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (SR), kerf width (KW) etc.). The review paper also reports the uses of different optimization techniques (such as taguchi technique (TT), response surface method (RSM), gray relational analysis (GRA) etc.) on various SS grades for optimizing the response parameters on the basis of different input variables. Furthermore, the research shows how to vary the value of output responses corresponding to input parameters value.