Improving Surface Roughness of Burnished Components using Abrasive Particles

Abstract

Roller burnishing process was carried out on free cutting brass materials in the presence of fine silicon carbide abrasives in the form of paste on a pre-machined surface. The results of ‘without-paste’ burnishing (plain burnishing, PB) and ‘with-paste’ burnishing (abrasive assisted burnishing, AAB) processes are compared to examine the effect of abrasive particles in the burnishing process. A 2⁴ full factorial design is adopted to develop the mathematical model for surface roughness regarding four process parameters like burnishing force, burnishing speed, burnishing feed and number of passes for both the cases, i.e. PB and AAB. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to find the effect of process parameters and to check the adequacy of the models. The results show that the parameters have a significant effect on the response in PB to improve the surface roughness by 75 % than the turned components. Whereas in AAB, fine abrasive particles as a single entity controlling the response and making other parameter effects as non-significant. Surface roughness further improved by 15 % in AAB process.