The simulation of surface topography generation in multi-pass sanding processes through virtual belt and kinetics model

Abstract

Belt sanding is an effective manner of material processing and widely used to improve the surface roughness and obtain high polishing glossiness. During the belt sanding process, the contact condition exhibits more complexity than grinding due to the flexibility of the belt. For the sanding application where surface glossiness is expected, it always involves multiple sanding as well as polishing passes. This makes the analytical modeling of the surface generation as well as its impact on glossiness formation complicated in this multi-pass operation. In this paper, the surface generation model for multi-pass sanding operation is established through the development of the virtual sanding belt model and the multi-pass kinematics simulation of the sanding process. As for the belt-workpiece contact zone, the 3D Hertz contact model is incorporated into the kinematics simulation to duplicate the real contact condition for multi-pass sanding. Furthermore, the critical surface topography parameters are identified to establish the correlation with belt sanding parameters. Finally, surface topography parameters related with glossiness properties, e.g., surface roughness Sq, surface height distribution kurtosis Ku, surface height distribution skewness Sk, and surface correlation lengths Lx and Ly, are studied for optimal sanding process parameter analysis. The optimal sanding condition for ideal glossiness should be that the rotation speed should be beyond 1200 r/min, and the workpiece feedrate should be below 50 mm/s.