Experimental analysis of surface finishing properties in magnetically assisted abrasive finishing of ASTM B16 brass

Abstract

Magnetically assisted abrasive finishing (MAAF) presents an attractive concept of surface and edge finishing by fine magnetic abrasive particles (MAPs). This study aims to contribute an experimental evaluation of the effect of process parameters viz. magnetic field density (MFD), circumferential speed of workpiece, and abrasive grit size on the surface finishing properties in MAAF when experiments were performed for finishing pipes of ASTM B16 brass material with the sintered MAPs. The developed model is based on the obtained experimental data accompanied by Box- Behnken design (BBD) of response surface methodology (RSM) analysis. Apart from deciding significant parameters, this analysis also presents the modeling of finishing properties and optimizes the desired performance parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) includes data of standard deviation, coefficient of determination (R2), adjusted, and predicted (R2). MFD and speed show a significant effect on both the responses viz. surface roughness improvement rate (SRIR) and material removal rate (MRR). Analysis has shown that abrasive grit size is the most dominant parameter towards SRIR followed by MFD. The maximum SRIR of 88.12% (minimum Ra 50 nm) and 4.28 mg min−1 is achieved through multi-objective optimization with 0.8 T MFD, 500 rpm speed, and 300 μm grit size. The mathematical models of SRIR and MRR were also developed using RSM, focusing on varying MFD, speed, and grit size which can be used to predict the desired surface finishing properties. The model generated for SRIR, and MRR has an error of 0.204% and 2.506% respectively. Further SEM images were taken to understand the surface appearance of the finished surface.