Honed Surface Multiscale Prediction Based on Multi-Stage Honing Process of Engine Cylinder Bore

Sequential honing process is usually implemented in engine cylinder bore processing to obtain the cross-hatched surface texture with excellent function to balance lubricant storage capacities and supporting performance. Many researches have devoted to correlating honed surface quality of cylinder bore with honing process parameters by means of experiments or simulations. Quite a few efforts have addressed the effect of sequential multiple steps on the surface texture in the honing of engine cylinder bore. However, these researches cannot provide an explicit and analytical methodology to predict honed surface texture efficiently and accurately. This paper presents an analytical and explicit methodology to incorporate a proposed microscale abrasive model into the analytical simulation process of sequential honing. The proposed abrasive model synthetically considers the shape, size, posture, and position of abrasives randomly distributed in honing stone, which is incorporated into honing head motions in terms of rotation, oscillation, and feeding. The kinematics of honing head is calculated by space–time discretization to capture the interaction between honing stones and cylinder bore surface. The above procedure acts as each single step for the sequential honing processes. This study investigates the sequential honing of two stages including semi-finish honing and plateau honing at different feeding speeds by applying the abrasive model with different abrasive sizes. The formation of cross-hatched surface texture was successfully achieved sequentially by semi-finish honing and plateaus honing. Then, the Abbott-Firestone curve of the honed surface can be obtained to analyze the influences of abrasive size and honing time of two stages on the surface roughness. Correctness of surface roughness predicted by the model is verified by comparing with a group of experiment measurements in terms of Abbott-Firestone Curve. Most errors of all the predicted R_k roughness family roughness parameters in the two honing stages are less than 15%. Based on the model, simulations are done to analyze the influences of abrasive size and honing duration time of two stages on the surface roughness. The result shows that the larger abrasive used in finish honing leads to the decrease in the material portions M_r1, M_r2 and the increase in the reduced valley depth R_vk. The longer plateau honing duration time is preferred to produce the larger M_r1, M_r2, and the smaller R_vk.