Numerical modeling and experimentation of three dimensional material removal characteristics in fluid jet polishing

Abstract

Fluid jet polishing is a promising ultra-precision polishing technology which has been successfully used in polishing various kinds of precision components. The characterization of the material removal plays an important role in deterministic ultra-precision polishing process, which not only helps to better understand its material removal characteristics, but is also used to predict the material removal and help to determine the dwell time needed at different positions of the workpiece. During the fluid jet polishing process, both vertical and oblique polishing modes are often used for different purposes. However, currently published researches about the modeling of fluid jet polishing are usually focused on the vertical impinging mode. Relatively few attentions have been paid to model the material removal in oblique impinging mode, whose material removal profile is asymmetric. As a result, this paper attempts to present a universal three dimensional numerical model (U3DNM) which can be used to model the fluid jet polishing process both in vertical and oblique impinging modes. The U3DMN is built based on the computational fluid dynamic modelling method. Four groups of simulations and polishing experiments were also conducted under various conditions so as to test the feasibility and reliability of this model. The results infer that the proposed numerical model is effective and has high robustness under various conditions. The successful development of the U3DNM provides a better understanding of the material removal characteristics which shed some light for better understanding and analysis of material removal for freeform surfaces which possesses continuous variation of curvatures.