Development of a fluid line-jet polishing process for rotational axisymmetric surfaces

In this paper, a fluid line-jet polishing (FLJP) process was developed for the polishing of rotational axisymmetric surface (RAS). FLJP aims to enhance the polishing efficiency of fluid jet polishing without degrading the polished surface integrity, together with better material removal uniformity than linear-array multi-jet polishing (MJP). The fluid field was analyzed by comparing to the normal fluid jet polishing (FJP) based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method so as to test the stability of the fluid line-jet. A series of polishing experiments were conducted to analyze the performance of the FLJP and compared to FJP and MJP in terms of material removal characteristics, the effect of the main factors (i.e. fluid pressure, stand-off distance, etc.), material removal uniformity and surface quality after polishing on cylindrical surfaces. The results indicate that FLJP has much higher material removal rate than FJP under the same polishing conditions together with superior surface quality. The material removal after FLJP is much more uniform than MJP, especially at the region along the length direction of the line orifice. Moreover, it is also found that the relationship between the polishing factors and the material removal rate in FLJP is similar to FJP, resulting in good control of material removal.