Effects of ball burnishing on the surface quality of Al 7075 alloy

The surface roughness of a part produced plays a critical role in influencing functional properties such as corrosion behavior, fatigue strength, and wear resistance. Therefore, it is very important to improve the surface roughness of Al 7075−T6 material, which is frequently used in the aerospace industry. For this reason, the finishing process, used to improve the surface quality of the parts in an easy, inexpensive and chipless manner, has recently become an interesting research topic. In this study, a ball burnishing apparatus was designed and experiments were carried out at different parameters (force, feed rate and number of passes) for the purpose of improving the surface quality of the parts. For the design of the experiments, the Taguchi method was used, thus saving time and cost savings and reducing the number of experiments required. Variance analysis (ANOVA) was performed and the effect contribution of the parameters on surface quality were obtained. As a result of the experiments, it was found that force, feed rate and the number of passes were important factors.