Rheological Characterization and Performance Evaluation of Magnetorheological Finishing Fluid

The novel controllable behaviour of magnetorheological (MR) fluid is the backbone of magnetorheological fluid-based finishing processes. MR fluid-based finishing processes facilitate better control over finishing forces as the stiffness of MR finishing fluid used in these processes can be controlled in accordance with the applied magnetic field and MR finishing fluid composition. Therefore, a detailed experimental investigation was carried out to find the effect of MR finishing fluid constituents on its yield stress through the Taguchi Design of Experiments. Rheological data obtained from a magneto-rheometer (MCR-102) was characterised by using Bingham plastic, Herschel–Bulkley and Casson’s fluid constitutive modelling. The coefficient of regression (R2) values of Herschel–Bulkley model were found to be best suited for all compositions of MR finishing fluid. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to find the contribution of selected parameters for improving the response characteristics. The optimized fluid has been then used for the finishing of biocompatible stainless steel AISI 316L, and the finishing results show that the average surface roughness value decreases down to 58 nm.