A critical review of tool design in burnishing process

Abstract

Industries like automotive, aerospace, railroad coaches, nuclear power and biomedical mainly focus on surface characteristics of machined components like surface roughness, hardness, fatigue strength, wear resistance, corrosion resistance. The burnishing process has emerged as an easy and economical surface enhancement technique concerning secondary operations like grinding, lapping and honing. Burnishing process is gaining popularity as a post-machining and finishing method in manufacturing industries which leads to the plastic deformation of work surface when it comes in contact with a highly polished and hardened tool known as a burnishing tool. The burnishing tool suppresses the peaks of surface roughness into its valleys and hence no chips are removed from machined surfaces. The burnishing process is mostly used to improve surface roughness, hardness, fatigue strength, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, microstructure properties and generates compressive residual stress. The burnishing parameters such as force, feed, speed, number of tool passes, ball diameter and lubrication medium have a greater influence on the surface characteristics of the component. This paper presents an extensive review of different burnishing tools which has been reported in the literature.