Contact force modeling and analysis for robotic tilted-disc polishing of freeform workpieces

Abstract

This paper investigates the tool-workpiece contact mechanism in the disc polishing process, where the soft polishing disc touches the rigid freeform workpiece with a small tilt angle. The developed contact force model can explain how the contact parameters, including the disc contact depth, the disc tilt angle, the radii of curvature of the disc and the workpiece, affect the normal contact force. Under some reasonable geometric and mechanical assumptions of the disc and the workpiece, an approximated contact force equation is derived in a simple power-law form similar to the Hertzian contact model. The contact force is found to be positively related to the disc contact depth and the disc radius, while negatively related to the disc tilt angle and the workpiece normal curvature that is orthogonal to the feed direction. Both finite element simulations and experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed contact force model. Furthermore, the material removal process is analyzed and a model-based process parameter planning method is developed to achieve uniform material removal considering the variation of workpiece curvatures.