Experimental evaluation of diamond burnishing for sustainable manufacturing

Abstract

Diamond burnishing is one of the most popular surface finishing technique used to achieve an excellent surface finish. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of process parameters in diamond burnishing of 17-4 PH stainless steel (PH SS) under cryogenic environment. The requirement of a sustainable environment for various machining processes urged to explore the importance of cryogenic burnishing over other cooling techniques. Surface modification was achieved by the application of liquid nitrogen (LN2) during diamond burnishing. The process parameters considered to reduce the surface roughness (Ra) and increase the surface hardness (H) are burnishing speed, burnishing feed and burnishing force. The diamond burnishing experiments were conducted based on the L9 orthogonal array. The significant parameters and the optimal level of each parameters were determined by using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and main effect plots respectively. Multi-response optimization has been carried out for cryogenic diamond burnishing of 17-4 PH stainless steel by using Taguchi’s grey relation analysis (TGRA). From the TGRA, it was observed that at burnishing speed 73 m min−1, burnishing feed 0.048 mm/rev and burnishing force 150 N, improved diamond burnishing performance characteristics were obtained. An improvement in grey relation grade (GRG) was found to be 38.47%. Cryogenic diamond burnishing has led to modifications in the microstructure and also an improvement in the subsurface hardness of the material.