Multi-Physics Coupling Modeling and Experimental Investigation of Vibration-Assisted Blisk Channel ECM

Due to its advantages of good surface quality and not being affected by material hardness, electrochemical machining (ECM) is suitable for the machining of blisk, which is known for its hard-to-machine materials and complex shapes. However, because of the unstable processing and low machining quality, conventional linear feeding blisk ECM has difficulty in obtaining a complex structure. To settle this problem, the vibration-assisted ECM method is introduced to machine blisk channels in this paper. To analyze the influence of vibration on the process of ECM, a two-phase flow field model is established based on the RANS k-ε turbulence model, which is suitable for narrow flow field and high flow velocity. The model is coupled with the electric field, the flow field, and the temperature field to form a multi-physics field coupling model. In addition, dynamic simulation is carried out on account of the multi-physics field coupling model and comparative experiments are conducted using the self-developed ECM machine tool. While a shortcut appeared in the contrast experiment, machining with vibration-assisted channel ECM achieved fine machining stability and surface quality. The workpiece obtained by vibration-assisted channel ECM has three narrow and straight channels, with a width of less than 3 mm, an aspect ratio of more than 8, and an average surface roughness Ra in the hub of 0.327 μm. Compared with experimental data, the maximum relative errors of simulation are only 1.05% in channel width and 8.11% in machining current, which indicates that the multi-physics field coupling model is close to machining reality.