Interaction of electric current with burnishing parameters in surface integrity assessment of additively manufactured Inconel 718

One of main problem associated with surface sever plastic deformation (SSPD) techniques like low plasticity burnishing (LPB) of metallic materials is limitation of surface integrity improvement at further loads (i.e. static force or pass number). It is due to interlocking of dislocation motion that limits further plastic deformation. As a plausible solution, in the present work, electric current assisted burnishing (ECAB) is introduced to use the concept of electroplasticity in surface integrity (roughness, hardness and residual stress) enhancement of Inconel 718 by additive manufacturing. Nevertheless, there are some researches which use this method to enhance performance of SSPD, the interaction effect of electrical parameter like current density with other parameters haven't been studied well. Thus, to make the process optimized in terms of surface integrity aspects, parametric study of ECAB process with focus on interaction of current density with other LPB parameters merits further investigations. Thus, in the present work, an experimental study was carried out to identify the interaction effect of current density (as main parameter of ECAB) with other burnishing parameters (spindle speed, feed rate, current density, pass number and static force) on surface integrity aspects. Analysis of variances was further carried out to identify the contribution of each parameter on performance measures. Then, the interaction plots based on polynomial regression were developed, analyzed and discussed based on the physic of plastic deformation and some microscopic analysis like surface topography, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. It was found from the results that electric current density has the greatest effect on surface integrity aspect with contribution of 60 % on surface roughness, 68.5 % on hardness and 30 % on surface compressive residual stress. On the other hand it was found that this parameter has high interaction with process factors while applying different current density changes the optimum burnishing setting for each performance measures. Application of LPB at optimum parameter setting causes improvement of surface roughness of as-built material about 54 %; further improvement of 70 % and 85 % in roughness values were also achieved when the electric current with densities of 5A/mm2 and 10A/mm2, respectively were applied to burnishing process at optimum setting. It was also found that application of optimum LPB as well as optimum ECAB with densities of 5A/mm2 and 10A/mm2, results in improving the surface hardness about 17.5 %, 42 % and 68 %, respectively. In addition, under foresaid post-processing sequence, the surface compressive residual stress enhanced from 121 MPa (tensile type) for as-built material to -208 MPa, -345 MPa and -488 MPa (compressive type). Finally, the most optimum solution results in minimum surface roughness as well as maximum hardness and residual stress were identified by desirability approach function as 300RPM spindle speed, 0.08 mm/rev feed rate, 10A/mm2 current density, 3 pass number and 300 N force. To show the application of this optimization in a real life problem, fatigue resistance of optimum samples for high cycle and low cycle testing were obtained and compared with as-built material. It was found that following this post-treatment, the life cycle of samples improves from 160 % to 270 %, respectively that affirms practical application and manufacturing efficiency of proposed approach.