Abstract
Ultrasonic vibration assisted machining appeals to researchers because of the improvement in surface quality and/or machining efficiency owing to reduced machining forces and heat from friction in machining process of hard-brittle materials. The concept was applied to chemo-mechanical grinding of fused silica glass in our experiments in anticipation of enhancement of surface roughness and/or material removal rate. The related experiments were performed on an in-house built apparatus. The preliminary results indicate that the newly proposed combination of chemo-mechanical grinding and ultrasonic vibration is feasible to precisely manufacture fused silica glass. The material removal rate is increased while the surface roughness remains the level similar to that in chemo-mechanical grinding without vibration. Compared to conventional loose abrasive polishing with aqueous slurry consisting of ceria, the material removal rate is considerably augmented. Certain processing parameters were experimented so as to find out their effects on material removal rate and surface roughness phenomenologically. The probable mechanism of material removal in ultrasonic vibration chemo-mechanical grinding was also explored as well as conventional chemo-mechanical grinding. A synergic mechanism of chemical reaction and mechanical removal is implied from the experimental results, which results in the removal of material from fused silica glass surface.
