An investigation of the mechanics of roller burnishing through finite element simulation and experiments

Roller burnishing is a surface treatment process that is of particular economic interest but not really well optimised. Due to a necessarily high degree of mesh refinement, until now the modelling of the process is rather limited to 2D plane strain finite element simulation. In order to account for fully tridimensional induced stress state, a 3D finite element model of the industrial burnishing process is proposed. A specific strategy consisting in determining a representative layer of the part and a minimum number of cycles is necessary to obtain results that can be compared to experimental ones. The quality of the obtained results in a reasonable simulation time demonstrates the possibility to efficiently use full 3D simulation for the burnishing process. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.