Sensitivity analysis of abrasive waterjet cutting economy

In this paper results from an economical optimisation model for abrasive waterjet cutting are presented and analysed. Different input parameters to the model have been varied in order to understand their significance on output parameters as pressure level and abrasive mass feed rate. The input parameters that showed to be of most interest were pump maintenance cost and abrasive cost. In the first part of the paper optimisation was made using commonly used functions of lowest cost. In the later part an analysis incorporating utilisation and profit was introduced. In this analysis was shown that knowledge and understanding of utilisation in practice is most important for the choice of process parameters. It was shown that both pressure and abrasive feed rate reached a minimum level at a certain utilisation level below which a decrease in cutting speed exceeds the diminishment in cost per hour. Thus the cost per meter is minimised