How can a jet of water be powerful enough to cut through steel?
In: 63
As a wise man once said, “a feather can absolutely knock you down if it’s traveling fast enough”.
In reality though, there’s abrasives mixed into the water. High speed abrasives = cutting.
From Newton, F = mA.
F is force. That is what is hitting the steel.
M is mass. Water is heavy. Often it is mixed with something else. Not really important for this part.
A is acceleration, or in this case deacceleration. Say the water is going 1500kph. It hits the steel and immediately goes to 0 (within microseconds), or even bounces off and going negative. That is directly proportional to the force generated. The faster the jet, the more the force. Ex. Say it goes from 1500km/s to -100km/s (bounces off), that is a speed change of 1600 kps, and that that happens in one microsecond.
1500000m/s / .000001s……
That is a big number.
Yes, waterjet cutting has a number of creative and efficient uses.
As pointed out they often use an added abrasive, frequently crushed garner, it was shocking when I first saw 20 totes, pallet size but a cube of crushed garnet.
I did a project where the customer was using waterjet to trim the flashing off of forged titanium jet engine blades.
But other used were slicing rice-crispy treats ( the very high pressures also sterilize the water), acoustic ceiling tile( they do not even get wet)… granted not steel but some of the variety of applications.
Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? That is a good example of the power of water.
REMEMBER! It dug the GRAND CANYON! Water and wind, thats it! Lots of other huge, mammoth, colossal, feats of nature’s…. Water and wind only!
Latest Answers