Numerical Analysis on a Selection of Horn Material for the Design of Cylindrical Horn in Ultrasonic Machining

Abstract

Ultrasonic machining is one of the advanced machining processes, utilized for machining hard and brittle materials viz. ceramics, glass, titanium–aluminium composites, etc. for drilling operation with high precision. Horn is one of the important components in the ultrasonic machining process, which transfers longitudinal vibration from the transducer to the tool end. The present investigation considers the design of a simple three-dimensional cylindrical horn using different materials (aluminium, titanium, steel, stainless steel and mild steel) in dynamic conditions. COMSOL multiphysics, a finite element software, is used to investigate the effect of the materials on the horn performance. The results are presented in terms of amplitude, mode shape, and von Mises stress. The analysis results showed that aluminium is one of the suitable materials for horn design followed by titanium, steel, stainless steel, and mild steel. The aluminium horn showed a high amplitude of vibration at the horn end (20.12 μm) at the frequency of 18,445 due to the low damping coefficient. Other materials titanium (12.266 μm), steel (7.134 μm), mild steel (7.036 μm) and stainless steel (6.145 μm) have also shown reasonable amplitude at appropriate applied natural frequency.