Advanced nonlinear rheology magnetorheological finishing: A review

High-performance devices usually have curved surfaces, requiring high accuracy of shape and low surface roughness. It is a challenge to achieve high accuracies for form and position on a device with low surface roughness. However, due to the unique nonlinear rheology, magnetorheological fluids with hard abrasives are widely applied in ultra-precision surface finishing. Compared with conventional mechanical finishing, magnetorheological finishing displays obviously advantages, such as high precision shape of machined surface, low surface roughness and subsurface damage, and easy control for finishing processes. However, finishing performance depends on various factors, e.g. volume fraction and distribution of magnetic particles, types of hard abrasives and additives, strength of magnetic field, finishing forms. Therefore, a comprehensive review on related works is essential to understand the state-of-the-art of magnetorheological finishing and beneficial to inspire researchers to develop lower cost, higher machining accuracy and efficient approaches and setups, which demonstrates a significant guidance for development of high-performance parts in fields of aerospace, navigation and clinical medicine etc. This review starts from the rheological property of magnetorheological fluids, summarizing dynamically nonlinear rheological properties and stable finishing approaches. Then, the effect of components in magnetorheological fluids is discussed on finishing performance, consisting of magnetic particles, carrier fluid, additives and abrasives. Reasonable configuration of magnetorheological fluids, and different magnetorheological finishing methods are presented for variously curved surfaces. In addition, the current finishing forms and future directions are also addressed in this review.