Developing Domeless, Circular Vibratory Finishing for Aerospace Applications

This paper proposed a vibrofinisher with a unique design—domeless, non-elevating and circular bowl vibrofinisher to be used for the aerospace industry. Compared to conventional circular dome vibrofinishers, this new setup could be more effective for material removal and surface roughness improvement than current industrial practices because of its better accessibility to annular geometries. There was limited literature to support this statement. In this paper, a model of a cuboid-body vibration system was proposed and a numerical analysis of this design with reference to past papers of standard design was conducted. The theoretical analysis showed a high potential for faster material removal rate due to an increase of 80.5% in the excitation force and excitation moment of up to 144.6%. Both displacement and rotational angle increased by 68% and 47% respectively, which suggests a higher amplitude. Using the theoretical results, the law of abrasive law and a roughness model was used to substantiate the effectiveness of the domeless bowl as a potential replacement to both the trough and dome bowl.