ISSN 10526188, Journal of Machinery Manufacture and Reliability, 2009, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 566–571.

© Allerton Press, Inc., 2009.

Original Russian Text © V.K. Astashev, N.A. Andrianov, M.P. Kozochkin, L.V. Kolik, V.L. Krupenin, N.V. SolisPinargote, 2009, published in Problemy Mashinostroeniya
i Nadezhnosti Mashin, 2009, No. 6, pp. 52–58.

NEW TECHNOLOGY
IN MACHINERY MANUFACTURE

On the Implementation of Ultrasonic Technology

V. K. Astashev, N. A. Andrianov, M. P. Kozochkin, L. V. Kolik,
V. L. Krupenin, and N. V. SolisPinargote
Moscow, Russia
Received August 17, 2009

Abstract—The results of processing various materials with autoresonance ultrasonic turning are pre
sented. After the ultrasonic processing of metals, nanostructured nearsurface layers emerge that are
responsible for the macromechanical characteristics of the material. The developed technology allows
for the processing of various hardtomachine materials with the obtainment of a surface of height
ened geometrical and mechanical properties and with minimum power inputs and material capacity.
DOI: 10.3103/S1052618809060089

1. Ultrasonic processing methods [1, 2] consist of the imposition of highfrequency (ultrasonic) vibra
tions on machining tools. These methods are used in the processes of plastic deformation, metal cutting
operation, wire and tube drawing, etc. By numerous experimental investigations, it was established that
the imposition of ultrasonic vibrations leads to an essential decrease in the static forces needed to perform
the technological process. These effects obtained an explanation [3, 4] based on the analysis of nonlinear
rheological models of technology processes.
In parallel with this, in [5–7], it was shown that processing the surface by methods of ultrasonic plastic
deformation, improving the surface quality, produced a nanostructured nearsurface layer with height
ened mechanical characteristics like yield strength, breaking point, and hardness of the surface.
However, it should be noted that obtaining of stable and predictable results of the ultrasonic processing
is possible only during the realization of the most effective resonant modes under conditions of a varying
technological load on an ultrasonic system from a treated product. Difficulties arising during this are
caused by the nonlinearity of the technological load, which stimulates specific distortions of the ampli
tude–frequency characteristics of the vibratory system [8, 9]. These difficulties during the excitation and
stabilization of the resonant modes can be eliminated by a transformation to a selfsustained vibration cir
cuit of excitation, which is realized with the introduction of a circuit of positive feedback. The circuit ful
fils the formation of the driving force by means of the nonlinear transformation of a signal proportional to
the motion of the working body of a machine. With a certain tuning, described as autoresonance, at any
variations of the parameters of the vibratory system and technological load, the mode of selfsustained
vibrations with the maximum possible amplitude, i.e., the most effective resonant state, is conditioned
automatically in the system [10].
Let us show that owing to the high stability of operating modes, the use of autoresonance systems opens
up wide new possibilities of ultrasonic technologies, which can be realistically described as autoresonance
[11]. The present paper gives the description of the results of the autoresonance ultrasonic turning of var
ious materials and systematizes the possibilities of this technology.
2. Let us consider an autoresonance device for ultrasonic cutting (turning). The device is designed for
reducing the cutting forces, turning hardtomachine materials, enhancing the smoothness and quality of
the surface of work pieces, and obtaining nanostructured surfaces during machining through lathes. The
main areas of the application of the device are plants, the production activity of which is related to the use
of various lathes to obtain a high quality of the surface of work pieces.
Figure 1 gives the principal schematic of the device [10]: 1 work piece obtaining a rotation with an
angular velocity Ω, 2 cutter, and 3 waveguide concentrator transmitting vibrations from piezoelectric
ceramic elements 4 to the cutter with an increase in the amplitude. The concentrator is fixed in a case 5,
which is mounted owing to a bracket 6 in the cutter support 7 of the lathe. The power supply of the piezo
electric ceramic elements is carried out via a feedback path containing a feedback sensor 8, which notes
the vibrations of one of the elements of the vibrating system; phase inverter Φ; and nonlinear amplifier 9.
With sufficiently large gain on the initial part of the amplifier characteristic, the selfexcitation of vibra
tions occurs, and the level of the limitation of the output voltage determines the amplitude of the steady
state vibrations and allows for an adjustment of its value. With a certain phase of the signal of the feedback,

566
 ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ULTRASONIC TECHNOLOGY 567

which is established trough the phase inverter Φ, the resonance 5 G

vibrations are excited with a frequency dependent particularly on
the technological load. If a phase shift in the feedback path is 4
selected so that the phase difference between the vibrations of the 3 9
cutter and the vibromotive force produced with a vibroexciter cor 6
1 7
responds to the resonance one, then the device provides the realiza
tion of resonance vibration with the variation of the technology load
and parameters of the vibrating system in wide ranges. Exactly this Ω 2 PI
type of a system of exciting the vibrations with the resonance tuning 8
of the phase in the feedback path is called autoresonance.
Fig. 1.
An important feature of such a system of vibration excitation
should be noted. It consists of the fact that through a variation of the
phase of the feedback, we can realize all of the amplitude–frequency characteristic of the nonlinear
vibrating system, including unstable, and consequently unrealizable, branches during forced vibrations.
Therefore, no failures of the vibration amplitude in the resonance system occur with the deviation of the
phase and frequency of vibrations from resonance ones. The mentioned feature makes the autoresonance
system steadystate with respect to the significant variations of the parameters of the machine and nonlin
ear technological load, which substantially widens the technological possibilities of the ultrasonic system.
In traditional ultrasonic technological systems, the power supply is carried from a generator G with the
independent excitation shown in Fig. 1 by dashed lines. In this case, even with the presence of tuning
internal feedbacks in the generator, the ultrasonic system is capable of working only with low technologi
cal loads that cause no appearance of unstable branches of resonance curves.
Tests of the resonance device have shown that its operation does not require any special knowledge or
experience. It is mounted by the standard method in the cutter support of the lathe, the cutter is led to the
work piece, and processing the work piece with the switchedon device does not differ from the traditional
one. There is the possibility of mounting the device on lathes with numerical control without changes to
the design of the lathe. The work is carried out at a cutting speed of 60–80 m/min and a depth of up to
2 mm.
3. Let us mention some dynamical and technological effects observed during technological tests of the
autoresonance device.
The reduction in cutting forces occurs during the turning of all metals: aluminum, copper, bronze, and
brass; carbon, stainless, and refractory steels; titanium; etc. During ultrasonic turning, a reduction in the
cutting forces occurs at cutting speeds υ < aω, where a and ω are the amplitude and the frequency of tool
vibrations, respectively. At that, the greater the difference of the values in the stated inequality, the greater
the reduction is. The cause of a reduction in the cutting force lies in the change of the nature of the cutting
process. Ultrasonic cutting is a periodical shockvibrating process with a frequency ω [8, 9], in which the
interaction between the cutter and the material is accompanied with periodical contact releases between
the cutter and the work piece. In this case, the amplitude of the arising impulsive forces is equal to the force
of the traditional cutting; the pulse duration depends on the ratio of the cutting speed υ and the amplitude
aω of the vibrating speed of the cutter. The cutting force measured in the experiments is the average period
value of impulsive forces.
Owing to a reduction in the cutting force with the autoresonance ultrasonic cutting, the technological
nonrigid pieces can be processed without the use of intermediate supports and lunettes.
The ultrasonic vibration of the tool completely eliminates the possibility of the excitation of selfsus
tained vibrations during cutting, which are one of the main causes of the quality degradation of the mate
rial surface of hardtomachine materials.
The ultrasonic vibration substantially changes the nature of removing chips. Even with the processing
of the materials, common turning which is accompanied with the formation of brittle chips, plum plastic
chips occur without rough edges and irregularities during ultrasonic processing. Figure 2 shows photo
graphs of strips during the course of the traditional (a) and ultrasonic (b) turning of a steel work piece. It
is evident that during traditional turning, crushed elemental chips with pronounced marks of shear sur
faces and characteristic toothing appear. During ultrasonic turning, spiral smooth continuous chips are
formed. The chips during ultrasonic turning come out substantially less heated and plastic, although they
have temper colors and turn out to be brittle. Therefore, evidently, the imposition of the ultrasound allows

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568 ASTASHEV et al.

(a) (b)

mm kol mm kol
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20

Ultrasonic
is turned on

Fig. 2.

(a) (b) (c)

0.2486

7.4 µm
1.8 µm

21 22 23 mm

Fig. 3.

us to substantially decrease the value of the minimally possible cut layer. For example, during the process
ing of carbon and stainless steels, we succeed in turning with an output of 0.05 mm/rev and a cutting depth
of 0.015 mm.
The change of the nature of the cutting process still shows that the imposition of ultrasonic vibrations
completely eliminates the phenomenon of the formation of incrustations of the material on cutter faces,
which is very important during the turning of plastic materials, e.g., aluminum and copper. This occurs
owing to the transformation of the dry friction, which is the principal cause of the formation of incrusta
tions, into a viscous one under conditions of highfrequency vibrations [4].
4. It is reasonable that a change of the character of turning with the imposition of ultrasonic vibrations
results in a change of the quality of the work piece surface, which is evident in Fig. 2.
Figures 3a and 3b present photographs of the surfaces of a piece of hardened steel machined through
traditional (right fragments) and ultrasonic turning (left fragments) at cutting speeds of about 10 m/min
(a) and 60 m/min (b) and a feed of 0.05 mm/rev. One can see radical differences in the quality of the sur
faces. The surface obtained through ultrasonic turning has a strongly regular structure. This is supported
with the surface profilogram (Fig. 3c), the right part of which is obtained through traditional turning; and
the left part, through ultrasonic turning. Periodical roots with a feed pitch of 0.05 mm, which are traced
on both parts of the profilogram, are the tracks of the cutting point. In Fig. 3b, on the site of ultrasonic
turning periodic marks are visible as a result of periodic (with a frequency of 20 kHz) shocks of the cutter
with the work piece. Similar marks under greater magnification are observed also at the surface in Fig. 3a.
However, here they are not inspected, since their pitch is significantly less, due to the small cutting speed.
Thus, the high stability of the modes of autoresonance ultrasonic processing opens up possibilities to
obtain surfaces with the given geometrical characteristics. Such surfaces can have enhanced tribological
behavior. Selecting the shape of the cutting edges of the cutter, we can obtain surfaces with a smoothness
close to the one obtained through grinding.
The cause of such a distinction in the results of cutting lies in the change of the cutting mode. During
traditional cutting with the continuous interaction of the cutter and the material, the plastic deformation
region located around the cutting edges is enlarged with the cutting speed. This region is saturated with
microcracks distributed in a random way. The growth of one or another microcrack also proceeds by a ran
dom law. Therefore, the surface obtained as a result of the cutting has an irregular distribution of micror

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 ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ULTRASONIC TECHNOLOGY 569

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 4.

(a) (b)

Fig. 5.

oughness. The ultrasonic cutting occurs as a result of the periodic microshocks that follow with a high fre
quency. At that, each cycle of loading begins under the same initial conditions. Owing to the high fre
quency of the sequence and short period pulses, the plastic deformation region is concentrated in a small
neighborhood of the cutting point and is not saturated with microcracks, which have no time for growth
over such a short time interval. Therefore, during the ultrasonic cutting with the stable mode of vibrations,
which is provided through the autoresonance system of excitation, the cutter trace at the material surface
practically is the mark of its shape that we observe in Fig. 3.
It is evident that due to the same reasons, ultrasonic cutting allows for processing brittle material sim
ilar to glass. Figure 4a presents a photograph of the element of a glass cylinder worked on the lathe without
ultrasonic (right fragment) and with ultrasonic (left fragment) processing. While attempting to turn the
glass without ultrasonic processing, glass particles break off in the form of relatively large elements, the
size of which is determined through the size of the region of the development of limiting stresses and
cracks. The presence of ultrasonic vibrations with the preservation of other equal conditions significantly
decreases the size of the separated particles, enhancing the quality of the surface. On the site worked with
the ultrasonic turning, we can clearly see a helical trace left by the cutter at a feed pitch of 0.05 mm/rev.
Figures 4b and 4c give photographs of surfaces obtained as a result of the traditional and ultrasonic turning
of the glass. In this case, as with metal processing, ultrasonic turning allows us to obtain a surface with a
regular pattern of traces of working. At the same time, the surface after ultrasonic turning (Fig. 4c) looks
uniformly lusterless, similar to roughly polished.
5. Earlier, we discussed the distinction of mechanical properties and the structure of the material of
chips during traditional and ultrasonic methods of turning. Similar distinctions should also be expected
in the surface layer of work pieces. Such a distinction is actually observed during the investigation of
microsections of cuts of pieces of copper that are worked with traditional (Fig. 5a) and ultrasonic
(Fig. 5b) turning. From photographs of the surface layers that are made under a microscope, the sub
stantial distinction of the material structure is obvious. The nearsurface layer of the piece has a more
dense and uniform structure after ultrasonic processing. The pronounced surface nanostructured layer
of a 2 to 4μm size is noteworthy. Extensive nanostructured formations are observed in all of the near
surface volume of the material. The macromechanical properties of materials in nearsurface layers
substantially depend on the nature of nanostructures, which is related to the parameters of autoreso
nance ultrasonic processing. The discovery of similar structures responsible for the mechanical proper

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570 ASTASHEV et al.

ties of the surfaces of products allows us to hope for the possibility of

obtaining surface layers with the desired macromechanical parameters
such as hardness, plasticity, wear resistance, etc.
Thermal processes in the cutting area play a great role in the formation
of the material structure in the surface layers. At the same cutting speed for
a sufficiently equal prolonged time interval in the process of traditional
and ultrasonic cutting, equal energy is supplied for plastic deformation
and friction and, consequently, an equal quantity of heat is generated. The
difference is in that, in the first case, the heat is released continuously and
the temperature within the working area is established with the balance of
Fig. 6. the rates of the heat receipt and removal at any time instant. At the same
time, the heat removal proceeds continuously and uniformly into the work
piece, cutter, and environment.
In the case of ultrasonic cutting, the heat release occurs with pulses during the time of the action of
pulses of cutting forces. At the same time, a pulsed increase in the temperatures of the working material
within the cutting areas and of the cutter material in the vicinity of cutting edges occurs. At each time
instant, the temperature of the piece and the cutter is determined by two processes: heating determined
through the specific heat capacity of the materials and cooling determined through the coefficients of their
heat conductivity and the temperature gradient. The cooling process in heated areas of the piece and the
cutter proceeds in the pulse spacing. As a result, the mean temperature in the cutting area during ultra
sonic processing is found to be significantly lower than during traditional processing.
The processes of phase transitions and changing the structure of the surface layer proceed differently.
This is supported by the performed experiments and the results of finiteelement modeling of the cutting
processes [12].
In conclusion, we note that the same processes explain the enhancement of the cutting tool life with
ultrasonic processing. The greater the specific heat capacity and the coefficient of the heat conductivity
of the tool material, the higher its endurance.
The work was carried out with the use of autoresonance devices for ultrasonic turning, which were
developed and produced by the authors collectively. Figure 6 shows a photograph of the device for ultra
sonic turning and the autoresonance generator. Let us present the general technical characteristics of the
device: the generator output is about 100 W; vibrational amplitude of the cutter, about 15 μm; nominal
vibration frequency, 20 kHz; automatic tuning range, ±1 kHz; and efficiency, about 50%.
Now, new autoresonance devices have been developed and prepared for implementation; investiga
tions of the geometry of surfaces and nanostructures arising during the processing of various materials are
underway.

ACKNOWLEGMENTS
This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project no. 090800941a.

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