Vibratory Finishing of Immobilized Cylinders

Abstract

We report preliminary results from an on-going study investigating the effect of fixing workpieces within the media flow field contained in a typical vibratory finishing bowl. To this end, we studied the surface roughness evolution over the surfaces of workpieces with generic geometries such as cylinders. A granular flow dynamics model applicable to dense granular flow and a previously derived process equation were invoked in order to respectively describe the flow of the abrasive media; and the roughness distribution in terms of the granular pressure and velocity. By solving the granular flow field for the pressure and velocity distribution on a given geometry using a general purpose computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, we were able to analyse changes in surface roughness distribution from the process equation. The immobilized cylinders were submerged in the top portion of the media flow field so as to facilitate comparison between media flow past the workpieces as experimentally observed and as predicted by the CFD simulations. We conclude with an analysis, based on both experimental and predicted results, of the way in which media flow direction biases the surface roughness distribution on an immobilized cylinder.