Development of semi-empirical model to estimate surface finish of Inconel-625 alloy in extrusion honing process

Abstract

It is vital and obvious to impart the required quality of surface on the interior and exterior areas of the machined component. Required texture can be imparted on the outer surfaces by conventional finish machining process like grinding, honing etc. The difficulty arises while finishing core inner region/miniature component such as nozzles, injector valves etc. This difficulty is addressed by EH process. It is a finish machining technique of inducing required surface texture by flowing the pressurized semi viscous carrier medium with SiC across the restricted passage. As a result, due to abrasion finishing action takes place by removing the material in small amount. The current study proposes a semi empirical model for surface finish Ra in extrusion honing process. The model is developed by Buckingham's π theorem and comparative assessment of the developed model by experimental results. By considering the stiffness of Inconel-625 alloy and opted process parameters such as number of passes, volume concentration and mesh size of abrasives. The final texture resulted due to EH process is described by performing SEM study. Finally, this work reiterates and traces the experimental results by the estimated values of non-dimensional model.

Keywords

• Extrusion honing (EH)
• Surface finish
• Material removal
• Abrasives