Experimental investigation of energy balance in plasma arc cutting process

Abstract

During metal arc cutting the heat generated by an arc is transported to material in a plasma jet and is utilized for its melting, while the plasma gas travelling inside the cut removes the molten material. The total available electric power of the arc is distributed between effective energy used for cutting and energy losses. A complete energy balance of the cutting process was evaluated for different plasma gas flow rates for two different steels. The results have shown that the efficiency of energy utilization for the same plasma torch parameters depends on the cutting speed and differs for different materials.