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 7c - higher pressure washing with power

In the last post, on surface cleaning, I showed how the jet from a fan nozzle spread very quickly once the water left the orifice. With this spread the stream got thinner, to the point that, very rapidly the jet broke into droplets. These droplets decelerate very rapidly in the air, and disintegrate into mist which rapidly slows down. That mist has little capacity but to get a surface wet, and thus, within a very short few inches, the jet loses power and the ability to clean.

How can we overcome this? Obviously the jet would work better if it could carry the energy to a greater distance. And the jet that does that (as we know from trips to Disney) is a cylindrical stream. In some parts of the cleaning trade this is known as a zero degree jet, to distinguish it from the fifteen degree or other angular designation of the fan jet nozzles that it is often sold with.

But the problem with a single cylindrical jet is that it has a very narrow point of application. Depending on the standoff from the nozzle to the target this will increase a little as the distance grows, but is still likely to be less than a tenth of an inch. That, by itself, would make cleaning a bridge deck a long and laborious job. But consider that if we spun the jet so that it is tilted out to cover a 15 degree cone, the same angle as the best of the fan jets, the water would travel further. With a good nozzle it is possible to extend the range to 3 ft, rather than the typical 4 inches of a fan jet.


Figure 1. The gain in performance when a fan spray is changed to a rotating cylindrical jet. (initially proposed by Veltrup, these are our numbers).

In both cases the water flows out of the orifice at the same volume and pressure. But with the rotating jet the water is able to carry the energy some 9 times as far. As a result the area covered is 9-times as wide, and the job is carried out faster.

You can also look at it another way. It takes only about 10% of the water and the power to clean the surface with the rotating jet, as opposed to the amount required to clean with the fan jet. This is even though the pump unit and the flow rates are the same in both cases. This is why, when you buy some of the smaller pressure washers, they include a nozzle that has a round orifice and which then oscillates within a holder. Not quite as efficient as a controlled movement, but at least it is a start.

Now, of course, life is never quite as simple as it at first appears. Because the jet is being rotated there is sometimes, if the jet is being spun fast enough, some breakup of the jet because of the speed of rotation. And so, in the above example, too high rotation speed would have a disadvantage. Doug Wright showed this in a paper he presented to the WJTA in 2007.
Figure 2. The effectiveness of a rotating jet, at two speeds and at different distances (Doug Wright 2007 WJTA Conference Houston).

On the other hand because the jet has to make a complete rotation before it comes back to the same point on the coverage width, if the lance is moving too fast relative to that turning speed, then the jet will miss part of the surface that it is supposed to be cleaning.

I can illustrate this with a sort of an example. To make it obvious the rotating jet has enough power to cut into the material that it is being spun, and moved over. If the rotation speed is too slow, relative to the speed that the head is moving over the surface, then the grooves cut into the surface won’t touch one another and small ribs of material are left in the surface. This is not a good thing, either from a cleaning or mining perspective. The material we were cutting in this case was a simulated radioactive waste, that an improved design later went on to extract as a “hot” material in a real world project. These materials tend to be unforgiving if they are not properly cleaned off.


Figure 3. Cutting path into simulant showing the grooves and ribs where the rotation speed is not properly matched to the speed of the head over the surface.

There is another answer, which is becoming more popular for a couple of different reasons. If the pressure of the water is increased, then the jet will remain coherent for a greater distance, at a higher rotation speed. Going to a higher rotation speed, also brings in an additional change in the design of the cleaning head.


Figure 4. Cleaning head concept sectioned to show vacuum capture of the debris through the suction line after the jet has removed the material and washed it into the blue cylinder.

As the pressure increases, so the energy of the water and the debris rebounding from the surface increase. To a point this is good, since once they are away from the surface it is relatively simple, if the cleaning operation is confined within a small space by a covering dome, to attach a vacuum line to the dome, and suck all the water and debris into a recovery line. The surface remains relatively dry, all the water and debris is captured, and the tool can be made small enough, and light enough, that it can be moved either by a man or on the end of a robotically controlled arm. (The arm we designed the head for was over 30-ft long, which means that the forces from the jets had to be quite small).

With the higher pressure also comes the advantage that the amount of water that is required, for example to remove a lead-bearing paint from a surface, is much lower. If the water becomes contaminated by the material being washed off, then not only has the total volume to be collected, which is an expense, but it also must be stored and then properly be disposed of. And that may cost several times the cost of the actual cleaning operation, if the contaminant is particularly nasty. So reducing the volume of the water is particularly useful.

A friend of mine called Andrew Conn came up with the idea, for removing asbestos coatings from buildings, of tailoring the pressure and the flow from the nozzles, so that the amount of water required was just enough that it was absorbed by the asbestos as it was removed. Simplified and reduced the costs of cleanup, where that was a significant part of the overall price.

And speaking of using higher-pressure water, this means that there is no need for the abrasive additive, when cleaning say a ship hull. And that means that there is no need to buy, collect, and dispose of the abrasive during the operation.


Figure 5. Spent cleaning abrasive at a shipyard.

There are other advantages to the use of high pressure water over abrasive when cleaning metal, and I’ll talk about that subject a little next time.