An investigation of ball burnishing process on CNC lathe using finite element analysis

•A new design is proposed for designing burnishing tool for CNC Lathe.•The ball burnishing process is simulated in FEM.•The main objective of the ball burnishing is to obtain better surface finish.•Hence, FEM is used to predict surface roughness of ball burnishing process.•Apart from roughness, FEM is also used to predict surface residual stress.

The paper deals with finite element analysis of burnishing process on the D3 tool steel material using CNC lathe. The input parameters are speed, burnishing force, and feed. The output parameters are surface roughness, residual stress, micro-hardness and out of roundness. Surface roughness generated after the turning operation is used to model the surface roughness pattern which is further used to simulate ball burnishing process using finite element based software DEFORM-2D. For tool steel, improvement in the surface roughness values achieved after ball burnishing process is 86.2%. The surface roughness and residual stress results of FEM simulations are compared with experimental results. The minimum and maximum deviation between the experimental and simulation values of surface roughness is 3.22 % and 8.69%, experimental residual stress is 0.63% and 3.94% and theoretical values of residual stress are 1.23% and 3.57%, respectively.