Modeling of material removal rate and surface roughness in finishing of bevel gears by electrochemical honing process

This paper describes mathematical modeling of material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness of the bevel gears finished by the electro-chemical honing (ECH) process. Since, ECH hybridizes electrochemical dissolution (ECD) and mechanical honing therefore, contribution of ECD in MRR and surface roughness has been modeled using Faraday's law of electrolysis while contribution of mechanical honing has been modeled considering material removal as a phenomenon of uniform wear and using Archard's wear model. Formulations are also proposed for computing the surface area, required by these two models, along the inter-electrode gap (IEG) based on the geometry of the straight bevel gear tooth surfaces. The developed models were experimentally validated using an indigenously developed experimental setup for finishing of bevel gears by ECH based on an envisaged novel concept of twin complementary cathode gears. An aqueous solution containing 25% NaCl + 75% NaNO₃ was used as the electrolyte. The predicted values of MRR and surface roughness have shown close agreement with the experimental values. The experimental results, SEM images and bearing area curve have shown appreciable improvement in the surface roughness and surface integrity ensuring better operating performance of the gears finished by ECH within an optimized finishing time of 2 min.