INVESTIGATION OF SURFACE ROUGHNESS AND MICROHARDNESS IN BALL BURNISHING PROCESS OF AZ31B MAGNESIUM ALLOY

Magnesium alloys which are lightweight and high strength materials have some limitations due to their insufficient corrosion resistance and low surface quality. To overcome these limitations, especially improving surface properties ball burnishing process was applied to magnesium alloy with different parameters like force, number of passes, feed rate and speed. For reducing number of experiments Taguchi method was used and optimum burnishing condition was determined according to S/N ratios. The results of surface roughness and hardness tests show that feed rate and force was found significant parameters for improving surface quality. When lower feed rate and higher force parameters was choosen best surface roughness value was obtained.