Modeling and Simulation of Material Removal Rates and Profile Accuracy Control in Abrasive Flow Machining of the Integrally Bladed Rotor Blade and Experimental Perspectives

Abrasive flow machining (AFM) technology is getting more and more interest by the industry and research community particularly in the context of increasing demands for postprocessing of the additively manufactured and complex components. It is essentially important to develop an industrial feasible approach to controlling and improving the profile accuracy (form and dimensional) of components as well as their surface roughness. In this paper, a multiscale multiphysics simulation-based approach is presented to model and simulate the AFM process against the component form and dimensional accuracy control in particular. The simulation is developed in comsol which is a multiphysics computational environment. Well-designed AFM experiment trials are carried out on a purposely configured blade “coupon” to further evaluate and validate the simulations. The AFM machine and specific machining media for the experiments are provided by the industrial collaboration company, with their further industrial inputs. Both the simulation and experimental trial results illustrate that the approach is applicable to the blade profile prediction and accuracy control, which is used as a foundation for developing the simulation-based AFM virtual machining system.