Investigation into a novel pulsating cavitation air jet polishing method for Ti-6Al-4V alloy

This paper investigated the polishing of Ti-6Al-4V alloy by a novel pulsating cavitation air jet polishing (PCAJP) process. The principle of PCAJP is that the nozzle of the air jet and the workpiece are completely immersed in the prepared abrasive fluid with a certain concentration, and the pressurized air jet is spurted through the nozzle to drive the movement of the abrasive fluid near the workpiece. Due to the combined action of abrasive particles and microbubble cavitation effects, high material removal rate and surface quality can be obtained. In this paper, a PCAJP system was developed. The optimization of the main process parameters was carried out and the final roughness of Ti-6Al-4V specimens reached Ra 0.096 µm from the initial Ra 1.2 µm.