Emulation For Flow Field In Electrochemical Machining Of Closed Integral Structure Based On COMSOL

Electrochemical Machining (ECM) used as the pre-process means for Closed Integral Structure with complex structure, high hardness material and difficult processing was adopted in this paper. The flow field design is a very important link because the machining gap flow field is directly related to forming precision, surface quality, and even decided if the ECM is successful or failed. The uniformity of flow filed available as the basis of the condition of the flow filed.The designing cathode of ECM on UG was processed. According to the shape of the flow channel processed the cathode prototype was established with cosθ method firstly, then the modification for cathode were carried out by combing experiment with computer-aided design. The mathematical model and geometry model of machining gap flow field between the cathode and workpiece, chucking were set up, the boundary conditions of gap flow field in simulation were defined, and the gap flow field of different cathode were solved by simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics to determine flow field design in the eyes of appropriate structure. In order to optimize the design of cathode and provide a basis for selecting process parameters, the change of gap flow field at the different inlet pressure of electrolyte and rotating flow field on the basis of flow field designed above were discussed. Finally, the correctness of the simulation for flow field was verified by experiments, and the correction of the cathode structure was completed.The result of the simulation show that the flow field in machining gap was relatively uniform when the cross groove width is1.5mm, the diameter of12holes is lmm with three rows of stagger distribution, the inlet pressure of the electrolyte flow is0.4MPa, of which provided is reverse. The experiments and the cathode repairing also verified this assertion. On the condition of improving the inlet pressure of electrolyte to0.8MPa or the gap flow field designed is rotational, the uniformity of the flow field in the machining gap improved further.The study shows that the simulation of flow field based on computational fluid dynamics could be guidances in the process of flow field design and the cathode optimization, the development cycle of cathode was shortened.