Modeling and simulation of surface roughness in magnetorheological fluid based honing process

A newly magnetorheological fluid based honing process is developed for internal surface finishing of ferromagnetic cylindrical workpiece as existing magnetorheological fluid based finishing processes are not found suitable to finish the ferromagnetic internal surfaces. The performance of the present developed finishing process in terms of reduce wear and improve the functional application of cylindrical components, mainly depends on the normal force acting on abrasive particles due to magnetic behavior of carbonyl iron particles in magnetorheological polishing fluid. Also, it depends on shear force acting on surface by abrasive particles due to translational and rotational motion of tool as similar to the honing operation. For the newly developed finishing process, the modeling of surface roughness with the effect of induced magnetic field and magnetic normal force for different finishing cycles have been proposed. To validate the model and understand the wear mechanism during finishing, the experiments have been performed on the internal surface of cylindrical ferromagnetic workpiece with the three different sets of finishing cycles. The surface roughness of cylindrical workpiece has experimentally measured with Mitutoyo SJ-400 surftest. Also, to understand wear mechanism during finishing, the scanning electron microscopy has been performed. The theoretical calculated values of surface roughness with number of finishing cycles are validated with experimentally obtained surface roughness values for the same number of finishing cycles and conditions. Both were found in close agreement within 5.88%. Thus, the present developed finishing process is found suitable to reduce wear on internal surface of cylindrical components which leads to saving in service, energy consumption, maintenance costs, and improves its functional applications as compared to traditional finishing techniques.