Modeling of Contact Forces for Brushing Tools

Brushing with bonded abrasives is a flexible finishing process used for the deburring and the rounding of workpiece edges as well as for the reduction of the surface roughness. Although industrially widespread, insufficient knowledge about the contact behavior of the abrasive filaments mainly causes applications to be based on experiential values. Therefore, this article aims to increase the applicability of physical process models by introducing a new prediction method, correlating the contact forces of single abrasive filaments, obtained by means of a multi-body simulation, with the experimentally determined process forces of full brushing tools during the surface finishing of ZrO2. It was concluded that aggressive process parameters may not necessarily lead to maximum productivity due to increased tool wear, whereas less aggressive process parameters might yield equally high contact forces and thus higher productivity.