Waterjetting 24c - angled jets in cutting concrete

In this short section of the series I have been discussing some of the issues that relate to cutting through concrete. In today’s piece the discussion will continue, focusing on the angles that the jets are set at, when making repeated passes over an area to deepen the cut. The basic premise of the discussion holds true regardless of jet pressure, provided that the concrete is being removed by a moving continuous jet stream, rather than a pulsed jet system, which I will discuss next time.

As was mentioned at the beginning, the main way in waterjets remove concrete most efficiently is by washing out the cement around the individual particles of the aggregate, which, in turn, causes the particles to fall out of the slot, since they are no longer supported.

If a cutting head is built with the jets pointing vertically downwards, so that, as the head moves, so the jets spin over the surface and wash out the cement over a wider path, any cement that underlies a particle is not removed, and the particle remains held in place by the underlying cement column.

Regardless of how the nozzle is moved over the surface, with only vertical jets the path of the assembly very rapidly becomes blocked, and the nozzles can no longer move into the slot to deepen it.

The obvious solution to this is to incline the nozzles so that as they rotate over the surface, they can reach under individual particles and wash out the cement beneath them, removing their support. This also has the advantage of cutting a path into the concrete that is wider than the cutting head itself, so that on later passes the head can be lowered into the cut, shortening the standoff distance to the fresh surface and improving cutting efficiency.

Moving the head down a little on each pass also has the advantage that it exposes fresh layers of cement to the jet action and makes it more likely that all the cement within the desired slot is removed (and the aggregate with it) leaving a clear path for the assembly to move deeper into the slot.

So the question then arises as to what the most efficient angle is to tilt the nozzles to, relative to the perpendicular axis of the target surface. (I use that awkward phrase because not all targets are going to be flat horizontal bridge or garage decks).

Very shallow angles don’t work very well. The best demonstration of this was when we started cutting slots in granite, with an initial divergent jet angle of around 8 degrees. After the first few passes we noted that the slot was developing walls that sloped into the cut. As a result the slot was getting narrower with depth, and the nozzle assembly would no longer be able to move into the cut.

Figure 1. Tapering cut into granite. The nozzle had been advanced about a third of an inch after each pass of a dual-nozzle rotating head. Nevertheless the cut tapered as the cutting continued.

We had chosen that initial angle because it worked well when cutting slots in coal, but clearly in harder, less jointed material that was not the case. And so we, and others, have carried out tests to find out what the best angle would be for the cutting tests.

And, before I show the results, let me emphasize that these only hold true for a certain concrete mix. Where aggregate particle sizes are larger, the jet angle may need to change to make it easier to get around. The pattern of the jets on the surface, (affected by the ratio of the rotation speed of the head relative to the movement of the entire assembly over the surface) and the jet parameters themselves (jet pressure, nozzle diameter and standoff distance) also play a part. In this latter regard remember that the effective range for many waterjet streams is not that much more than a hundred diameters from the orifice, so that expecting some of the smaller nozzle sizes (say 0.005 inches) to cut cement more than half-an-inch from the nozzle may be an exercise in futility – and raising the jet pressure in that circumstance is unlikely to fix the fact that the target is simply out of range.

So, with those caveats, here is the result that was obtained by Puchala, Lechem and Hawrylewicz*:

Figure 2. The effect of nozzle angle on cutting performance in removing concrete (*Puchala, R.J., Lechem, A.S., and Hawrylewicz, B.M., "Mass Concrete Removal by High Pressure Waterjet," Paper 22, 8th International Symposium on Jet Cutting Technology, Durham, UK. September, 1986, pp. 219 - 229.)

Nevertheless it is clear that there is much better performance where the jets are inclined at an angle between 25 and 35 degrees to the normal to the target surface. This is reflected in the improved efficiency of cutting (as shown by the second line in figure 2, showing a more significant change with angle than is evident from the depth of cut measurements). In all cases we have found that the jet angle needs to be 15 degrees or greater to make sure that wall taper does not occur.

Correlating the rotation speed against the traverse speed of the head over the surface to find the optimal cutting performance is a little more difficult, and should generally be assessed for given concrete targets with a short test run, before the major effort is undertaken. One reason for this is the wide range in performance that can be found with different cements. We have worked with cement that was sufficiently weathered that it could almost be removed using one’s hands, on the one hand, and the new cements that contain silica fume, or small wires or fibers pose a different and more difficult challenge on the other.

This also holds true over setting the advance rate of the nozzle assembly into the slot after each pass (where the head is cutting in a series of passes to penetrate the slab). Here the advance is going to be controlled in part by the size of the aggregate, though it should be noted that even with little apparent progress the nozzle assembly should be advanced after each pass, since this exposed a fresh layer of cement to attack, and this will lead to more aggregate release and help in clearing the cut.

Waterjetting 8d - Choosing angles

How times change! I was reading a column in the British Farmer’s Weekly, and came upon this, where the author is discussing the need for a generator.:

It will also be vital to keep the fuel flowing into the tractors, and power the pressure washer, and light the security lights, and all the other essentials of an average arable farm.

It is an indication of how far the use of pressurized water has come, that it is now seen, at the lower end of its application, as a vital farming tool. Which is a good introduction to talk a little further about the use of cleaning streams, and how to interact with differing target materials.

There was an initial first step, when someone would send the lab a mystery block of material and asked – how do I cut it? Generally the samples were small, but we would find a flat surface on the material, and carefully point a jet nozzle perpendicular to this surface. (In the early stages this was hand-held). When a jet strikes a surface, but can’t penetrate it, then it will flow out laterally around the impact point, under the driving force of the following water.

The test began with the jet at low pressure, and this was slowly raised, until the point was reached when the pressure was high enough to just start cutting into the material. At this point the jet had made a small hole in the target, and so the water flowing into that hole had to get out of the way of the water following. The sides of the hole stop it flowing laterally, and so it now shoots back along the original jet path. This spray can hit the lance operator if the nozzle is hand-held, but it is a fairly graphic way of determining the threshold pressure at which the material starts to cut. (and I’ll get into what happens as the pressure continues to go up in a future series of posts).

But for the purpose of cleaning, the jet has to move over the surface, once it has made that initial hole, at pressure. But, in many materials, if the jet comes vertically down onto the target, then only the material directly under the jet will be removed. And so the jet has to be played on every square inch of the surface in order to ensure that it is cleaned, or that the coating/layer is removed. In some sandstones, for example, two jet paths could be laid down, almost touching one another, and yet the rib of material between them would remain standing.


Figure 1. Adjacent jet passes in sandstone, the cuts are about an inch deep, but note that even though the narrowest rib is about 1/8th of an inch wide, it is only when the cuts touch that the intervening material is removed.

Yet that rib of material was, in that case, so weak that it was easy to break it off with a finger. (This turns out to be a weakness in making delicate sculptures out of rock). To use the full pressure of the water can be a waste of energy, if the material is very thick, since it all must be eroded with such a direct attack.

Yet the minimum amount of material that needs to be removed is that that attaches the layer to the underlying material (the substrate concrete, steel etc) and this can be quite thin. Thus, in attacking a softer material, particularly one that can be cut with a fan jet, a shallow angle directed at the edge of the substrate can be more effective.


Figure 2. Round v fan cleaning from Hughes (2nd US Waterjet Conference)

Because there is a balance between cutting down through the material to be removed, and cutting along the edge to grow the separation crack between the materials, some practice is needed to find, for a given condition, what that angle would be.


Figure 3. Choice of angle from Hughes (2nd Waterjet Conference)

The more brittle the material, then the greater the angle to the surface, since rather than just erode the material, the jet may also shatter the layer into fragments that extend beyond the cut path. But otherwise using an angled jet to the surface can be more effective. Hughes (from whose paper at the 2nd Waterjet Conference I took these illustrations) has a simple test for orifice choice.


Figure 4. How target response influences nozzle selection. (Hughes 2nd Waterjet Conference)

Some of the more advanced cutting heads use a series of nozzles that spin within an outer protective cover, as they remove anything from layers of damaged concrete to thin layers of paint from ship hulls. Increasingly these are connected to vacuum systems that will draw away the spent water and debris from within the contained space, without it entering the work space, and creating problems for the worker.

In order to reduce any collateral damage to the surroundings these jets are often made very small (thousandths of an inch in diameter) so that their range is short, and they are inclined outward to cut to the edges of the confining shield.

We have had some success in turning those angles the other way, so that they cut into the shield, rather than away from the center, and also so that each jet is directed towards the path of the next jet around the circumference. The intent in this case is to allow the use of a slightly larger jet, with a greater cutting range. In this case the individual cleaning/cutting path is a little larger, but because the jet at then end of the cut moves into the range of the adjacent jet, then any remaining energy that it and the dislodged debris still have, will not be enough to get through this second jet.


Figure 5. Inclined jet and shroud design.

The action of each jet then becomes not only to cut into and remove material, but also to contain the spent material from the other jets dispersed around the cutting arm, and to hold the debris in the center of the confinement for the very short time needed for it to be caught up in the vacuum line.

In all cases the choice of pressure, nozzle size, and operational factors such as angle of attack, come down to the target materials, those that have to be removed, and those that need to be left undamaged. And it is why it is useful, at the start of any new job, to take the time to do a little testing first, to make sure that the right choices of nozzle and angle have been made to get the job done quickly and efficiently.

Incidentally the idea behind the test of effective pressure, that the jet flows laterally when it hits something it can’t cut, can help, for example in easing the meat from the bone when a jet cuts a deer leg.


Figure 6. Cut across a deer leg, note how the jet has cleaned off the meat from the bone, undercutting the flesh.