Panagiotis Karmiris-Obratański

Non-conventional processes are considerably important for the machining of hard-to-cut alloys in various demanding applications. Given that the surface quality and integrity, dimensional accuracy, and productivity are important considerations in industrial practice, the prediction of the outcome of the material removal process should be able to be conducted with sufficient accuracy, taking into consideration the computational cost and difficulty of implementation of the relevant models. In the case of AWJ, various types of approaches have been already proposed, both relying on analytical or empirical models and developed by solving partial differential equations. As the creation of a model for AWJ pocket milling is rather demanding, given the number of parameters involved, in the present work, it is intended to compare the use of three different types of efficient modeling approaches for the prediction of the dimensions of pockets milled by AWJ technology. The models are developed and evaluated based on experimental results of AWJ pocket milling of a titanium workpiece by an eco-friendly walnut shell abrasive. The results indicate that a semi-empirical approach performs better than a two-step hybrid analytical/semi-empirical method regarding the selected cases, but both methods show promising results regarding the realistic representation of the pocket shape, which can be further improved by a probabilistic approach.

Since printed capacitive sensors provide better sensing performance, they can be used in automotive bezel applications. It is necessary to fabricate such sensors and apply an optimization approach for choosing the optimal sensor pattern. In the present work, an effort was made to formulate interdigitated pattern-printed Silver (Ag) electrode flexible sensors and adopt the Taguchi Grey Relational (TGR)-based optimization approach to enhance the flexible sensor’s panel for enhanced automobile infotainment applications. The optimization technique was performed to derive better design considerations and analyze the influence of the sensor’s parameters on change in capacitance when touched and production cost. The fabricated flexible printed sensors can provide better sensing properties. A design pattern which integrates an overlap of 15 mm, an electrode line width of 0.8 mm, and an electrode gap 0.8 mm can produce a higher change in capacitance and achieve a lower weight. The overlap has a greater influence on sensor performance owing to its optimization of spatial interpolation.