DEM Simulation of Abrasive Brushing Processes on Additively Manufactured Workpieces

Brushing with bonded abrasives is a finishing process mainly used for deburring, edge rounding, and surface roughness reduction. The brushing tools consist of flexible polymer filaments embedded with abrasive grains, allowing them to adapt to complex workpiece shapes. However, interactions between filaments lead to complex motion, chipping, and wear behaviors, making it difficult to predict work results. The discrete element method (DEM) has been shown to be effective in simulating process forces, contact areas, and filament interactions on flat workpieces. Consequently, this article focuses on processing geometrically complex workpieces, particularly additively manufactured turbine fan blades (Ni-Cr-Co), using round brushes with bonded silicon carbide. First, a vectorized iterative method is introduced to generate artificial filament patterns, enhancing DEM simulation accuracy compared to state-of-the-art filament pattern models. Subsequently, dry brushing experiments are carried out on a fan blade feature demonstrator, aiming to achieve homogeneous roughness reduction. The qualitative analysis of the contact surface suggests that results from DEM simulations can reduce the need for costly technological investigations and prototypes.