Investigation on the performance of fluid jet polishing using shear thickening slurry

Fluid jet polishing (FJP) is a versatile method used for polishing small and complex components. The unstable removal function which is caused by the pulsation of turbulent jet is one of the main limitations for FJP. In this paper, this problem is addressed by a novel shear thickening FJP method. The shear thickening fluid (STF) is employed for preparing the polishing slurry instead of conventional Newtonian fluid. The principle of shear thickening FJP is present based on analyzing the behavior of STF under the special shear rate distribution. Then the influence of the shear thickening behavior on the material removal rate and the surface roughness of UBK7 components is investigated. The performance of the shear thickening FJP is verified detail by experiments. It is found that the shear thickening behavior would be beneficial to the surface accuracy of workpiece, owing to its ability of reducing the turbulence intensity in the boundary layers of fluid jet. Compared with normal FJP, the surface roughness of polished parts could be improved more than 40% in shear thickening FJP, while maintaining the material removal rate.