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In this paper an experimental study of drilling small and deep holes with a continuous abrasive water jet is presented. The abrasive water jet (AWJ) is a process that can be used for drilling a vast variety of materials. The main advantage of the AWJ is the absence of the heat-affected zone and its flexibility. Drilling tests were performed on different materials and the hole depth and diameter were observed at different machining times. It was found that when drilling different materials with a continuous jet, the depth and diameter of the hole increase with a power function. These findings were then used to develop an empirical model for predicting hole depths and diameters at different drilling times.

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A new two-dimensional cellular automata (CA) model for the simulation of the abrasive water jet (AWJ) cutting process is presented. The CA calculates the shape of the cutting front, which can be used as an estimation of the surface quality. The cutting front is formed based on material removal rules and AWJ propagation rules. The material removal rule calculates when a particular part of the material will be removed with regard to the energy of AWJ. The AWJ propagation rule calculates the distribution of AWJ energy through CA by using a weighted average. The modelling with CA also provides a visual narrative of the moving of the cutting front, which is hard to observe in real process. The algorithm is fast and has been successfully tested in comparison to cutting fronts obtained with cutting experiments of aluminium alloy.

In this paper, the cutting front development during abrasive water jet (AWJ) cutting is studied using a two-dimensional cellular automata (CA) model, hence the striation formation phenomenon is studied indirectly. To calculate the shape of the cutting front, the CA model uses the following inputs: cutting velocity, AWJ intensity and material type. The cutting process is described by simplified material removal and AWJ propagation models in the form of CA rules. The rules encompass AWJ ability to erode the workpiece material and, inversely, the workpiece material's resistance to the erosion process. The proposed CA model is validated by checking the trend of the cutting front development at various input parameters. The simulation results are in good agreement with experimentally obtained trends and thus confirm the proper setup of CA rules. This gives a better insight into the AWJ cutting mechanism.