Theoretical and Experimental Investigations into Wire Electrochemical Turning (Wire-ECTrg) Process Using Finite Element Method

Abstract

Wire electrochemical micromachining (Wire-ECMM) has gained significant popularity and attention from researchers around the globe for generating linear and nonlinear micro slits on electrically conducting workpiece surfaces with uniform or variable thickness. Features machined using this process find applications in various industries including MEMS, aerospace, automobile, biomedical, consumer electronics and similar others. However, the applicability of this process in machining of cylindrical workpieces is yet to be investigated exhaustively. In the present work, principles of Wire-ECMM are used for turning operation and it is termed as Wire electrochemical turning (Wire-ECTrg). For the purpose of predicting the anode profile with time in two dimensions, a model is developed based on finite element method (FEM) and the algorithm is implemented on MATLAB (R2016a). Distribution of electric potential in the domain of simulation is obtained by numerically solving the two-dimensional Laplace equation for potential function in cartesian coordinate system and the variation of current density along the circumference of workpiece is evaluated. Workpiece is rotated about its center with constant angular velocity and the variation in its radius with number of rotations is plotted. The rate of change of workpiece radius is observed to retard with an increase in number of rotations. Due to differential dissolution rate along the circumference of workpiece, the evolved anode profile deviates from circularity within the span of one complete rotation. The developed model is validated with the experimental results obtained from an in-house fabricated experimental setup and a good correlation between the experimental and predicted values of workpiece diameter is observed.