Implementation of new stepped horn in rotary ultrasonic machining of NOMEX honeycomb composites

Performance of rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) system greatly influences by appropriate design of ultrasonic horn. Ultrasonic stepped horn gives high amplitude of vibration and better cutting efficiency but design and integration of horn with RUM system is highly intricate. Therefore, systematic study on design and implementation of ultrasonic stepped horn was needed in order to achieve better efficiency of RUM process. This paper focuses on design aspects of ultrasonic stepped horn by theoretical, FE simulations and modeling techniques. The designed horn was integrated with RUM system, performance was measured in terms of ultrasonic resonant frequency through FE simulations and modeling on ANSYS workbench. Finally, fabricated ultrasonic stepped horn was validated by performing experiments on rotary ultrasonic machine tool for Nomex honeycomb composites (NHCs). FE simulations and experimental results prove that the designed ultrasonic stepped horn achieves reasonable vibration amplitude at desired resonant frequency to perform RUM process on NHCs materials.