Volume 10 Issue 4 ( December )

Quartz glass has several applications in micro-electrochemical systems (MEMS) and microfluidics systems. Quartz glass micro-channels provide a flexible foundation for various biomedical applications, offering precise fluid control in drug delivery systems, optical navigation, biosensing, and microreactor capabilities. Broad applications of quartz glass create interest in the machining analysis of this material among researchers. Quartz glass machining is challenging due to its highly brittle and non-conductive nature. The electrochemical spark machining (ECSM) process offers efficient and economical machining of quartz material compared to other machining processes, such as Laser beam machining (LBM) and Electron beam machining (EBM). This research performs multi-objective optimization of the milling ECSM process through PCA-based GRA on quartz glass workpiece to achieve a high material removal rate (MRR) with the least surface roughness (S_R ). The experiments are designed and performed in Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array. The output machining responses, material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (S_R ) are optimized through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based Grey Relational Analysis (GRA). The machining parameters of the milling ECSM process are optimized for maximum MRR and minimum SR . PCA based GRA technique optimizes machining parameters as voltage 55 V, electrolyte concentration 19 wt.%, tool rotation 600 rpm and duty cycle 0.82.

Keywords: Multi-objective optimization; ECSM; PCA based GRA ;Quartz