The design of the water-jet cutting machine, intensifier unit

Some of the advantages that the water-jet cutting systems provide in industrial area are: wide scale of cutting materials, any form can be cut easily, no tool change or wear, no thermal distortion. For these advantages water-jet cutting technology is getting spread in the industrial usage. The main part to intensify the water to the high pressures is the intensifier unit. Intensifier can be single layered as they can be double- layered or multi-layered. As 180 MPa is the upper pressure limit for the single layer intensifier due to the material properties based on material strength, the multi-layered intensifiers can withstand ultra high pressures. A single-layer prototype was produced in Mechanical Engineering Department Laboratory in The University of Çukurova which has the operating pressure of 180 MPa. Later a double-layer intensifier was produced to increase the operating pressure up to the 300 MPa. In this study, the design limits of the last prototype of intensifier was investigated according to the material, and optimum design criteria was found. Optimum design parameters and stress distributions along the radial axis were shown in graphs by using mathematical tools like Mathematica®. And the optimization method was explained briefly.