Experimental investigation on temperature-affected magnetic abrasive finishing of aluminum 6060

ABSTRACT

Magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) has a sound capability in boosting surface quality of advance material such as ceramics, composites, and hard alloys. The surface finish and quality have a greater dependency on the rise of temperature of the target surface during the microfinishing via MAF process. In present study, experiments were done to measure the “rise in temperature” of aluminum 6060 microfinished surface. Taguchi “L₉ Orthogonal Array” (L₉ OA) was employed to design the experiments with voltage, abrasive weight, working gap, and rotational speed opted process parameters. Buckingham π-theorem was used to formulate a semiempirical dimensional model to forecast the “rise in temperature.” The dimensionless constant and exponents were calculated by nonlinear approximation of L₉ orthogonal array experimental results. The dimensionless constant ($K$) of predictive model was 6.3066 × 10⁻⁶ and exponents (ϕ,$\phi$,$\gamma$, and $\delta$) were calculated 1.7509, −0.6651, 0.3934, and −0.0830, respectively. Finally, to explore the flexibility of developed Buckingham-π dimensional model to other materials, this model was applied on mild steel workpiece to predict and analyze the raise in temperature microfinished using MAF process. Predictive semiempirical temperature model was validated with confirmatory test results. The predictive results had good agreement with 7.31% average error in respect to test results.

KEYWORDS:

• Magnetic
• abrasive
• finishing
• aluminum 6060
• Taguchi
• L₉ orthogonal
• array
• temperature
• Buckingham-π