Proposal for the suppression of ripple formation in beam cutting techniques

Introduction: Waterjet machining is a very flexible and advanced industrial technique for cutting and shaping all sorts of materials ranging from plastic to steel or ceramic. However, the effectivity of this process is limited by a spatio-temporal instability of the cutting front leading to the spontaneous formation of grooves and striation patterns at the lower edge of the cutting surface. Based on a recently devised model describing the evolution of cutting surfaces in waterjet cutting techniques we discuss strategies to suppress front instabilities. We demonstrate that suitable temporal modulations of various process control parameters such as feed rate, beam intensity or beam width as well as modulations of the path geometry can be used to suppress unwanted ripple formation in cutting processes.