Comparison of Electrochemical Micromachining Performance using TOPSIS, VIKOR and GRA for Magnetic field and UV rays heated Electrolyte

Abstract

The application of micro components in various fields such as biomedical, medical, automobile, electronics, automobile and aviation significantly improved. To manufacture the micro components, different techniques exist in the non-traditional machining process. In those techniques, electrochemical micromachining (ECMM) exhibits a unique machining nature, such as no tool wear, non-contact machining process, residual stress, and heat-affected zone. Hence, in this study, micro holes were fabricated on the copper work material. The sodium nitrate (NaNO₃) electrolyte is considered for the experiments. During the experiments, magnetic fields strength along with UV rays are applied to the electrolyte. The L₁₈ orthogonal array (OA) experimental design is planned with electrolyte concentration (EC), machining voltage (MV), duty cycle (DC) and electrolyte temperature (ET). The optimization techniques such as similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and grey relational analysis (GRA) were employed to find the optimal parameter combinations. The entropy weight method is used to assess the weight of responses such as MR and OC. The optimal combination using TOPSIS, VIKOR and GRA methods shows the same results for the experimental runs 8, 9 and 7, and the best optimal parameter combination is 28 g/l EC, 11 V MV, 85 % DC and 37°C ET. Based on the analysis of variance (ANOVA) results, electrolyte concentration plays a significant role by contributing 86 % to machining performance. The second and least contributions are DC (3.86 %) and ET (1.74 %) respectively on the performance. Furthermore, scanning electron microscope (SEM) images analyses are carried out to understand the effect of magnetic field and heated electrolyte on the work material.