Preliminary investigation of hydrodynamic nanopolishing of flat steel plates

Abstract

Nanoscale polishing finds application in medical, industrial, telecommunication, optics, electronics and military fields. However, rigid tool based methods, such as diamond turning, grinding and honing, have inherent limitations in creating nanopolished surfaces in hard and profiled surfaces. To address this issue, the current work is focused on experimental investigation of Hydrodynamic polishing (HDP) as a method to generate nanofinished surfaces. The process involves deterministic flow of abrasive particles in the slurry between the workpiece surface and a rotating soft tool to get the desired surface finish. HDP experimental setup has been fabricated and experiments are conducted on two types of steel plates. Preliminary experiments are designed to investigate the effect of two process parameters on mild steel, namely, concentration of abrasive in the slurry (motor oil) and the spindle speed. The second material investigated is oil hardened non-shrinking steel (OHNS, 58-62 HRC) with colloidal alumina suspensions of three different particle sizes. The average surface roughness (R(a)) obtained in mild steel is 150 nm with F mu m abrasive particles and 18 nm with 0.3 mu m abrasive particles on OHNS.