Development and experimental study of machining parameters in ultrasonic vibration-assisted turning

Abstract

In recent years applications of hard materials in different industries, like aerospace, defence and petrochemicals sectors etc. have been increased remarkably. The machining of these hard materials is very difficult in conventional turning process. Ultrasonic assisted turning is a suitable and advanced process for machining hard and brittle material because of its intermittent cutting mechanism. In the present work, an ultrasonic vibratory tool (UVT) is designed and analyzed using ANSYS ® environment for calculation of its natural frequency and working amplitude of vibration. An ultrasonic assisted turning system is designed considering cutting tool as a cantilever beam. Experimental study has been carried out to find the difference between ultrasonic- assisted and conventional turning at different cutting conditions taking carbon steel (a general purpose engineering material) as the work piece material. It is found that ultrasonic assisted turning reduces the surface roughness and cutting force in comparison with conventional turning. It is well known that cutting force and surface finish/roughness are two major parameters which affect the productivity of the turning process. In the present work, Grey based Taguchi method is used to optimize both cutting force and surface roughness to find the best possible machining parameters under the used experimental working conditions. Also, second order response models for the surface roughness and cutting force are developed and confirmation experiments are conducted.