A preliminary study on smoothing efficiency of surface irregularities by hydrodynamic polishing process

Abstract This study is to investigate the efficiency of surface irregularity reduction by the hydrodynamic polishing process under the semi-contact lubricating condition. Several sets of experiments were conducted to examine the magnitude variation of work’s surface irregularities in the smoothing process. The experiments indicated that the efficiency of surface irregularity reduction was related to the magnitude and wavelength of work’s surface irregularities. The efficiency is high when the magnitude is high. On the other hand, it is low if the wavelength is large. The tool speed showed little effect on the efficiency. The experimental study indicated that there was an ultimate value of surface irregularities attainable in a given polishing condition. This ultimate value was shown to be related to the wavelength of surface irregularities. An analytical model was also proposed to examine the properties of smoothing efficiency. The smoothing efficiency was shown to be linearly proportional to the magnitude of surface irregularities. It will be close to zero if the magnitude is reduced to a certain value.