International Journal of Engineering and Technology

In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the effect of aluminium powder when mixed in the distilled water dielectric fluid. The work and tool electrode materials used are W300 die-steel and electrolytic copper respectively. Pulse peak current, pulse on-time and concentration of aluminium powder are taken as the process parameters. The output response considered is white layer thickness (WLT). The experiments are planned using face centered central composite design procedure. Empirical model is developed for WLT using response surface methodology (RSM) to study the effect of process parameters. Optical microscopy results show that low thickness of white-layer 17.14 µm is obtained at high concentration of powder of 4 g/l and low peak current of 6 A.