Residual Stress and Surface Roughness Minimization in Laser Cutting of 304L Stainless Steel

Laser cutting is a widely used process in industry for cutting metals, plastics, and other materials. However, it can result in residual stresses and surface roughness, which can affect the quality and performance of the final product. Thus, minimizing residual stress and surface roughness in laser cutting is an important research topic in the field of part manufacturing to enhance reliability and performance of machined parts. A virtual machining system for predicting and minimizing residual stress and surface roughness in laser cutting operations is developed using simulation and optimization techniques. The Stainless Steel Johnson Cook models are used to calculate the cutting temperature throughout laser cutting operations. The residual stress during laser cutting process is then calculated using the finite element approach. To minimize the Residual Stress and Surface Roughness in the operations, the Taguchi optimization technique is utilized to obtain the optimum cutting speed, laser power and beam size during cutting operations. Thus, using the optimized machining parameters, the residual stresses and surface roughness of the sample machined parts are decreased by 23.3% and 25.8% respectively. Therefore, the developed virtual machining procedures can be an effective tool in enhancing reliability and performance of machined parts using laser cutting operations.