COMSOL Simulation to Predict the Thickness of Material Removed from Surface During Electropolishing

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COMSOL Simulation to Predict the Thickness of Material Removed from Surface During Electropolishing

Author : Dr Manjesh Kumar

Year : 2023

Publisher : Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH

Source Title : Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

Document Type :

Abstract

Electropolishing (EP) is a non-traditional polishing method which is governed by Faraday’s law of electrolysis. An experimental setup is design and developed to perform the EP of maraging steel. EP removes some layers of material from the surface to achieve a mirror finish polish surface. In this paper, a simulation of 2D model is developed to predict the thickness of material removed from the workpiece surface during EP to achieve mirror like surface finish. A finite element-based COMSOL software is used to design the model for EP. A comparative analysis of thickness removal from experiment and simulation is done. The measured thickness of material removed is 13.16 µm and 14.51 µm from experiment and simulation, respectively. The surface roughness, Ra is also measured and it is 0.276 µm before EP, which reduces to 0.107 µm after EP, an improvement of about 61% is observed.