Abrasive water jet cutting technology is widely applied in the materials processing today and attracts great attention from scholars, but many phenomena concerned are not well understood, especially in the internal jet flow of the cutting head at the condition of ultra-high pressure. The multiphase flow in the cutting head is numerically simulated to study the abrasive motion mechanism and wear inside the cutting head at the pressure beyond 300 MPa. Visible predictions of the particles trajectories and wear rate in the cutting head are presented. The influences of the abrasive physical properties, size of the jewel orifice and the operating pressure on the trajectories are discussed. Based on the simulation, a wear experiment is carried out under the corresponding pressures. The simulation and experimental results show that the flow in the mixing chamber is composed of the jet core zone and the disturbance zone, both affect the particles trajectories. The mixing efficiency drops with the increase of the abrasive granularity. The abrasive density determines the response of particles to the effects of different flow zones, the abrasive with medium density gives the best general performance. Increasing the operating pressure or using the jewel with a smaller orifice improves the coherency of p articles trajectories but increases the wear rate of the jewel holder at the same time. Walls of the jewel holder, the entrance of the mixing chamber and the convergence part of the mixing tube are subject to wear out. The computational and experimental results give a qualitative consistency which proves that this numerical method can provide a reliable and visible cognition of the flow characteristics of ultra-high pressure abrasive water jet. The investigation is benefit for improving the machining properties of water jet cutting systems and the optimization design of the cutting head.
The recent research about cavitation jet mainly focuses on the organ-pipe nozzle and triangular nozzle. The research content mainly includes the optimized design about the structure of nozzles, the observation and flow analysis about the cavitation jet in the water, and the theory of rock attacked by the cavitation jet, while the energy characteristic of the free jet is not studied yet. In China, the research about the central-body nozzle is almost empty. For the purpose of studying the energy characteristic and the structure of free water jet discharged from central-body nozzle, an experiment with phase Doppler particle anemometry（PDPA） technology is carried out to measure the free water jet flow, which is produced by a central-body nozzle under the jet pressure of 15 MPa. While five sections with different axial distances from the nozzle outlet are selected for data process and analysis, the axial and radial velocity and the droplets of the particle size are studied. Meanwhile, numerical calculation of corresponding flow field is conducted by using volume of fluid（VOF） multiphase model, and the jet flow feature is discussed. The experimental and calculating results show that the axial velocity of high speed jet flow dissipates slowly in the air, and the core area and diffused area are discovered. The diameter of droplet in the core area is small, and jet energy is concentrated, while in the diffusion area, water is mingled with ambient air and radial velocity is relatively large. Obvious low-pressure area exists behind the central body and potential cavitation may occur in that area. The proposed research reveals the energy characteristic of free jet discharged from central-body nozzle, provides the theoretical basis for preestimating erosion feature of the central-body nozzle and also the theoretical foundation for revealing the mechanism of erosion.
