Abrasive Jet Polishing Utilizing the Synergistic Effect of Ultrasonic Pulse-Cavitation and Process Optimization Research

Compared to the traditional abrasive jet polishing method, the ultrasonic coupled abrasive jet polishing (UC-AJP) method that utilizes the synergistic effects of pulse and cavitation can achieve a higher polishing efficiency. To further improve the polishing quality of the UC-AJP method, process optimization research was conducted on the quartz glass as the polishing object. The research was divided into two stages. In the first stage: the orthogonal array of the Taguchi method (TM) was used to design the experiments; the process parameters were optimized and the significant control factors were obtained through the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA). In the second stage: the response surface methodology (RSM) was used to establish the linear roughness prediction model and the interaction law of process parameters in the UC-AJP process was revealed, then the significant control factors were further optimized. On the basis of the above work, application research was conducted on the glass-based micro-channels with different cross-sectional structures, which verified the performance of the UC-AJP method for conformal polishing. After polishing with the optimized UC-AJP process parameters, the surface roughness of the workpiece decreases from 0.2640 to 0.0460 μm, and the surface roughness improvement rate is 82.6%.