Multi-spark simulation of the electrochemical discharge machining (ECDM) process.

Electrochemical discharge machining (ECDM) has been studied numerically by several researchers using single spark simulation during finite element modeling (FEM) for analyzing the material removal rate (MRR). However, the process includes the stochastic nature of the spark striking that leads to complexities. Because of this randomness, FEM based multi-spark simulation has not attempted till date. This article attempts to develop an improved model based on a randomly oriented multi-sparks for estimating the MRR. Gradually growing spark behavior and Gaussian heat input are utilized for acquiring the temperature distributions within the work-material. The temperature distributions are further processed to evaluate the MRR with consideration of craters overlapping formed during the multi-spark occurrence. The predicted results exhibit a fair agreement with the experimental results. The simulation-based parametric studies are performed on MRR using applied voltage, electrolyte concentration, and energy transference since it influences the total heat input energy given by the sparks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]