Abstract
Small, high-performance products made of hard brittle materials, such as glass and ceramics, are increasingly attracting attention. Ultrasonic machining (USM) is an effective method for fabricating various structures on hard brittle materials. However, when machining size is reduced to the sub-millimeter range, as the size of abrasive grains is in the micrometer range, machining efficiency of USM becomes low. In this study, to obtain guidelines to improve machining efficiency of USM, the mechanism of material removal in USM was analyzed by the smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The simulation results indicated that the material and shape of abrasive grains in the slurry used in USM markedly influence the machining efficiency. Finally, experiments indicated that USM with spherical alumina as the abrasive grains in the slurry showed high efficiency.
