Abstract
Graphene-epoxy nanocomposites (GRENCs) are redefining new material applications in a trend toward miniaturization that has prompted a transition to micro and nanoscale machining. This need for effective miniaturization and microchannel processing has led to a surge in interest in this current study for the electrochemical spark micromilling (ECSMM) process. Initially, GRENC was developed using 0.5% graphene nanoparticles in an epoxy medium, followed by characterization. A central composite face-centered (CCF)–response surface methodology (RSM) is used to conduct experiments with applied voltage, duty cycle, and tool rotation as input variables. Voltage appears to be the most influencing factor by contributing 8.84%, 33.85%, and 21.99% to material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (Ra), and depth overcut (DOC), respectively, and the duty cycle is the most influential factor for width overcut (WOC) contributing by 30.66%. The surface morphology of the fabricated microchannel was analyzed using optical microscopy and SEM. FTIR analysis of electrolyte precipitate post-machining identified potentially harmful organic pollutants. Multiobjective optimization (MOO) is performed using the desirability function approach (DFA) and genetic algorithm (GA). Further, the TOPSIS approach selects a single optimal parameter set from 50 optimal values generated by MOO-GA. MOO-GA results show significantly lower quality loss (8.76%) than single-objective optimization using GA (90.65%) and is better than DFA.
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