The paper deals with the assessment of the potential application of plain waterjet for surface treatment of stone materials as an alternative to technologies traditionally employed for this task, like bush-hammering, sand-blasting and flaming. Waterjetting has been already proposed in the market for rough finishing of surfaces making use of a fast rotating head provided with multiple nozzles. At the University of Cagliari considerable research has already been carried out using either abrasive or plain waterjet, stationary or pulsed, generated through a fan-type nozzle aiming at obtaining an evenly treated surface. A particular goal of the tests described in the paper is that of developing a technique enabling to make engravings on the stone in order to achieve special aesthetic effects. The experimental results obtained on a broad set of rocks show that the technology is viable on both technical and economic grounds, allowing to obtain excellent results at a relatively low processing cost by resorting to multiple line nozzles.
[1]
Thomas J. Kim,et al.
Development of an Abrasive Waterjet Kerf Cutting Model for Brittle Materials
,
1992
.
[2]
G. Costa,et al.
Working the surfaces of non-flammable ornamental rocks with water-jets technology (Part one)
,
2007
.
[3]
G. Taylor,et al.
The fracturing of rocks by pulsed water jets : 8F, 5R. QUARRY MANAGEMENT AND PRODS, V2, N1, JAN. 1975, P3–8.
,
1975
.
[4]
M. Hashish.
On the Modeling of Surface Waviness Produced by Abrasive-Waterjets
,
1992
.
[5]
Yilmaz Ozcelik,et al.
Optimization of working parameters of water jet cutting in terms of depth and width of cut
,
2012
.
[6]
Jun Wang,et al.
The Effect of High Pressure Abrasive Water Jet Cutting Parameters on Cutting Performance of Granite
,
2006
.
[7]
N. Brook,et al.
The penetration of rock by high-speed water jets
,
1969
.