Prediction of Material Removal Rate in Ductile–Mode Micro Ultrasonic Machining

This paper presents a model to predict Material Removal Rate (MRR) in Micro Ultrasonic Machining (micro-USM). The proposed model is developed based on the ductile-mode of material removal in micro-USM process. The correlation between ductile material removal rate and process parameters including frequency and amplitude of the ultrasonic vibration, particle size, and slurry concentration is presented. The proposed predictive model is verified by performing micromachining experiments using two types of workpiece materials including silicon and quartz at various process parameters levels. The results show that the MRR increases with a rise in vibration amplitude for both silicon and quartz materials. The experimental MRR values follow a trend similar to that of predicted MRR values. However, the predicted MRR values are higher than the measured MRR values for both silicon and quartz materials. The measured MRR values for ductile removal mode were found to have a considerable increase at vibration amplitudes of 2 mm and 2.4 mm for silicon and quartz, respectively, which is in favour of increasing the accuracy of the model prediction.