The Simulation Of The Flow Field And Cathode Designing Of Numerical Control Electrochemical Machining

Numerical control electrochemical machining (NC-ECM) is developed as a new kind of electrochemical machining technology, which uses the cathode with a simple shape and combines the CNC system for multi-axis movement. This process not only has flexibility of CNC, but also has the advantage of electrochemical machining.At present, how to design cathode efficiently and low-costly is one of the main challenges of ECM. It is important to ensure that the flow field of the ECM is well-distributed when the cathode is designed. Sparks, short circuits and other faults may occur in the process when the flow field design is seriously flawed. The design of the flow field is a process which is proofed repeatedly, and the parts can be machined when the flow field is reliable. In order to reduce the costs and time, the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software has been used in NC-ECM to study the flow field of the inside and the inter-electrode gap of the cathode which is more accurate to guide the design of flow channel, and the problem of designing cathode inefficiently and high-costly can be solved.The cathode design in NC-ECM is researched in this paper. One kind of spherical cathodes is designed and the flow field is simulated in two-dimensional model. The flow field of the electrolyte is analyzed through the distributions of the velocity, and the optimal cathode design is carried out. Four kinds of the flow field are simulated in three-dimensional model to verify the accuracy of two-dimensional simulation results, and the characteristics of the flow field are discussed by setting different initial conditions.In this paper, the orthogonal experiments are carried out by use of four kinds of the cathodes. The simulation accuracy of flow field model is verified through the orthogonal experiments and the optimal design of cathode can be guided. On the basis of the orthogonal experiments, the blade surface is machined by choosing appropriate processing parameters and optimal cathode.