Influence of slide burnishing process on the surface characteristics of precipitation hardenable steel

The surface integrity of the material is the predominant necessity of a component to perform efficiently in varying working conditions. To improve the surface integrity of the workpiece secondary finishing processes are being performed. This work attempts to propose a realistic cryogenic slide burnishing condition for improvement of the surface integrity. The slide burnishing was performed by a novel slide burnishing tool on 17-4 precipitation hardenable stainless steel. The experiment was designed based on a central composite design. Initially, the effect of control parameters on the output response was examined by experimental analysis based on the design of experiment. Analysis of variance was used to analyze the influence of the variables on the performance indices. The regression technique was used to develop an empirical model. Optimization of process parameters for finding minimum surface roughness and maximum surface hardness was achieved by a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The optimized solutions were validated by performing confirmation experiments.