Utilization of a thermal model to predict electrode erosion parameters of engineering importance

A simple solution to the one-dimensional heat conduction equation has been shown to describe quite accurately the scaling laws obtained experimentally for electrode erosion. For erosion where vaporization or ablation is the dominant material removal mechanism the correct scaling parameter is either f/sub 1/ proportional to Q/sub e/I/sub p/ (t/sub p/)/sup 1/2/, or Q/sub e/, where Q/sub e/ is the effective charge transferred, I/sub p/ is the peak current and t/sub p/ is the pulse width (defined as the width of the first half cycle for oscillatory pulses). It is shown that the electrode erosion results for many materials, for several different experimenters, scale linearly with f/sub 1/ regardless of whether the material is vaporized or ablated. The relative magnitude of the erosion for different materials is characterized quite well by the energy required to vaporize or melt the material.<
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