Simulation and Optimization Study on Shear Thickening Polishing of Complex Surfaces

The complex surfaces have been applied in industrial production fields such as aeronautical engineering, mold engineering, artificial knee joints and bearings. In order to improve the applicability of these complicated surfaces, it must be machined to achieve the high quality with a small surface roughness. For that reason, a non-Newtonian fluid polishing method is studied and carried out to polish the complicated surfaces. The combination of the abrasive slurry and the non-Newtonian fluid will create a shear thickening zone for cutting process. As a results, the quality of the workpiece surface is greatly improved. This machining process is affected by polishing parameters such as inclination angle (I), height from the workpiece to the bottom of the tank (H), and velocity (V). In this paper, a simulation process is performed to investigate the effect of machining parameters on the spherical titanium alloys of Ti-6Al-4V through the ANSYS software. The pressure distribution will be presented and analyzed. In addition, the multi-responses optimization is used to optimize the maximum pressures on the workpiece surfaces in polishing process. According to the simulation and optimization results, the best machining parameters were selected for increasing the maximum pressure area on the workpiece surface in machining process. As a results, the optimal machining parameters such as the height of 11.5 mm, velocity of 2.5 m/s, and inclination angle of 16° were established for machining process.