Experimental investigations into forces during magnetorheological fluid based finishing process

Magnetorheological fluid based finishing process is a fine finishing process that has been applied to a large variety of brittle materials, ranging from optical glasses to hard crystals. Under the influence of a magnetic field, the carbonyl iron particles (CIPs) and non-magnetic polishing abrasive particles remove material from the surface being polished. Knowledge of forces acting is important to understand the mechanism of material removal. A dynamometer and virtual instrumentation are used to on-line record the normal force and tangential force acting on the workpiece through the magnetorheological (MR) fluid. A full factorial design of experiments is used to plan the experiments and ANOVA to correlate the forces and process parameters. The selected process parameters (volume concentration of CIPs and abrasives, working gap, and wheel rotation) are varied over a range to measure forces during experimentation. The maximum contribution is made by a working gap on the forces developed on the workpiece surface followed by CIP concentration while the least contribution is noticed by the wheel speed. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.