Theoretical and Experimental Study of Ultrasonic Vibration-Assisted Laser Polishing 304 Stainless Steel

Di Kang,Ping Zou,Jilin Xu,Wenjie Wang,Hao Wu

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3036403

Di Kang, Ping Zou + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.3036403

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Abstract

With the increasing requirements for the surface quality of the workpiece, many kinds of hybrid manufacturing have developed recently. Ultrasonic vibration-assisted laser polishing (UVLP) is a new hybrid manufacturing method. Different from the traditional method of applying ultrasonic vibration on the workpiece, this article applies ultrasonic vibration on the lens. Besides, the thermal mechanisms of the 304 stainless steel polished by traditional laser polishing (TLP) and UVLP were analyzed to reveal the influence of ultrasonic vibration on the polishing effect. The ultrasonic vibration lens transforms the laser polishing into an intermittent polishing process, which affects the laser energy density and the quality of the polished surface. This research was focused on the experimental analysis of the surface morphology and surface roughness of the 304 stainless steel that was processed by UVLP, and compared with TLP. And the effects of laser power, scanning speed, focus offset, and amplitude on the quality of the polished surface were obtained. The preferred process parameters of UVLP 304 stainless steel were obtained by the range analysis and variance analysis of the orthogonal experiment. Experimental results have shown that UVLP can reduce the surface roughness of 304 stainless steel from $2.777~\mu \text{m}$ to $0.512~\mu \text{m}$ at most. Thermal mechanism analysis results were verified by experimental results. Choosing appropriate processing parameters can effectively improve the quality of the polished surface, making the processing effect of UVLP significantly better than TLP.

Highlights

With the development of advanced technologies such as aerospace and ship, the requirements for equipment performance are constantly increasing
The results have shown that the maximum decrease range of surface roughness was from 10.4 μm to 2.7 μm, and there was no significant change in microstructure and micro-hardness
The intermittent laser polishing process is obtained by adjusting the ultrasonic vibration amplitude, laser power, scanning speed, and focus offset

Summary

Introduction

With the development of advanced technologies such as aerospace and ship, the requirements for equipment performance are constantly increasing. At present, polishing is the primary final processing to reduce the surface roughness of components and remove the damaged layer that is formed by the previous process. It can eliminate the residual stress on the surface and obtain a smooth and non-damaged machined surface. The molten material is flowed by surface tension and gravity. Laser polishing has the advantage of polishing for high hardness materials [9]–[11] It is regarded as a new surface final processing technology, which is promising to replace the timeconsuming and error-prone manual polishing [12], [13]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion