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Procedia CIRP 89 (2020) 277–281
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

CIRP BioManufacturing Conference 2019

Experimental study on laser assisted belt grinding of shark-skin bio-inspired

riblets under different surface roughness
Yun Huanga, Yuan Wua, Yi Hea, Quanzhong Zhaob,c, Guijian Xiaoa,*, Shui Hea，Kangkang Songa
a
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, Chongqing University, NO.174, Shazheng Street, Shapingba District,Chongqing 400044, China
b
Shanghai Institue of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of science, NO.390, Qinghe Road, Jiading Distract, Shanghai 201800, China
c
Nanjing Institue of Advanced Laser Technology, NO.1, Hengyuan Road, Nanjing Economic and technological Development District, Nanjing 210038, China
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-023-67669663; fax: +86-023-67669663. E-mail address: [email protected]

Abstract

The surface integrity and structural characteristics of titanium alloy blades have great influence on the aerodynamic performance of aero-engines.
It has been proved that shark-skin bio-inspired riblets can improve the aerodynamic performance of parts by 10%. At present, the process of this
structure is mainly formed by laser, rolling, etc., and the above processing methods have low efficiency, poor surface integrity and other problems.
Belt grinding is widely used in surface polishing of titanium alloy blades, which plays an important role in improving the surface integrity.
However, it is difficult to guarantee the surface’s microstructure characteristics. Therefore, combining the advantages of laser processing, the U-
shaped structure produced by laser assisted belt grinding processing of shark skin is proposed. Firstly, based on the characteristics of the structure,
a laser assisted belt grinding processing method is proposed and the forming process of the surface structure is analyzed. Then the experiments
of titanium alloy plates with different surface roughness were carried out. Finally, the U-shaped structure is analyzed by white light interferometer.
The experimental results show that the ratio of depth to width is h/s=0.4~0.6, the surface structure is mainly U-shaped structure, and the machining
error is less than 10%. So this method can be used for the processing of U-shaped structure.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CIRP BioManufacturing Conference 2019.
Keywords: Shark skin, riblets, surface roughness, belt grinding, laser processing;

1. Introduction Therefore, it is of great significance to realize high performance

surface machining of titanium alloy parts.
The core components of titanium alloy such as blade, blisk Bionic science is an important emerging and marginal
and casing of aero engine have been used for a long time under discipline developed from the intersection of biology and
conditions of high temperature, high pressure, high speed and engineering technology. Especially for the non-smooth body
alternating load. The surface characteristics of these key surface, after many years of research on the biological non
components have a crucial impact on engine service smooth body surface and its morphological characteristics, and
performance. In particular, the shape accuracy and surface functional characteristics, bionic principle and technology, the
microstructure of the new high precision curved sweep bionic non smooth theory has been formed (such as shark skin
compressor blade based on the ternary flow theory have great riblets with drag reduction, lotus leaf with super
influence on the performance such as aerodynamics, drag hydrophobicity). And its purpose is to solve many scientific
reduction. According to statistics, processed blade quality will technical problems and provide the ideas and inspiration of
affect the turbocharging efficiency of aero engine by 1-5%. innovation. Studies have shown that the non-smooth body

2212-8271 © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CIRP BioManufacturing Conference 2019.
10.1016/j.procir.2020.05.152

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 278 Yun Huang et al. / Procedia CIRP 89 (2020) 277–281

surfaces of these animals and plants have self-cleaning, micron-scale parallel ridges on the surface of Ti6Al4V. But at
desorption, drag reduction, wear resistance and other present, there are few systematic researches on the precise laser
characteristics[1]. control processing of shark-skin bio-inspired ribbed surface.
Polishing such as belt grinding is usually the last process of In this study, a laser assisted belt grinding method was
blade processing. Belt grinding can form good surface integrity proposed based on the structure characteristics, and the
under the requirement of ensuring the shape accuracy, so it is formation process of the surface structure was analyzed. Then
often used in the process of titanium alloy blades. However, the experiments of titanium alloy plates with different surface
due to the randomness of the distribution of abrasive grains in roughness were carried out. Finally, the U-shaped structure is
abrasive belt, the microstructure formed on the blade surface is analyzed by white light interferometer. The experimental
usually disorderly and it cannot guarantee its surface results show that the formed ratio of depth to width is
microstructure. Due to its ultra-short pulse width, ultra-fast h/s=0.4~0.6, the surface structure is mainly U-shaped structure,
laser processing has almost no thermal effect on the workpiece and the machining error is ＜10%. So this method can be used
surface during machining, which makes the material for the processing of the structure and significantly improve the
composition of the workpiece surface well preserved and at the surface integrity characteristics.
same time ensures the control of the workpiece surface
microstructure. Laser processing of the surface with biological 2. Materials and method
characteristics after belt grinding can not only ensure good
surface integrity, but also obtain the surface with special 2.1 Shark-skin bio-inspired riblets and its derived models
functions, which has potential effect on reducing drag of the
blade and improving its performance. The riblets of various shark skin and their derived models
Belt grinding is widely used in surface processing. Belt are mainly came from Bechert et al[1], which are mainly
grinding has the dual functions of grinding and polishing with divided into three models. They are blade-shaped, U-shaped
high process flexibility and strong adaptability, and its and W-shaped. The shape parameters mainly include: h is the
characteristics of flexible grinding have a unique fitting effect depth of the groove, s is the width of the groove, α is the angle
in the smooth transition of profile [2]. In view of the above of the groove, and w is the plane width of the groove tip. It is
characteristics, belt grinding technology has been successfully found that h/s=0.6 has the best drag reduction performance.
applied in the precision grinding of aero engine blades, In this experiment, U-shaped structure surface was selected
becoming one of the effective processing technologies to as the target structure, and the regular U-shaped microstructure
improve their surface integrity [3]. Xiao GJ et al.[4] proposed surface was machined on titanium alloy by laser assisted belt
a new grinding method of abrasive belt oriented to the grinding process.
consistency of profile accuracy. On one hand, through the
periodic reciprocating motion of the abrasive belt combined 2.2 Experimental materials
with the principle of self-sharpening grinding, the efficient
removal of residual layer in previous milled profile is realized. The material used in this experiment is TC4, and the
On the other hand, the high consistency of blade profile in the composition of titanium alloy TC4 is Ti-6Al-4V, belonging to
same section can be ensured by the automatic updating of (α+β) titanium alloy, which has good comprehensive
abrasive belt periodically. A new method of belt grinding and mechanical properties and high specific strength. And its size
its grinding control equation for the consistency of profile is 170cm×100cm×2cm, as shown in Fig. 1.
accuracy are described and established. Xiao GJ and Huang
Y[5] studied the equivalent adaptive belt grinding method at
the edge of the propeller blade, and analyzed the surface Ra=0.1µm

roughness after grinding. The results showed that the surface

roughness after grinding was ≤0.25 µm, and the surface Ra=0.4µm

presented compressive stress state. Lin XJ et al.[6] adopted the 100cm Clamping
area

flexible polishing technology and controlled the light-throwing Ra=0.8µm

axis vector to achieve the effective fitting of the belt and the
blade profile. The development of the belt grinding technology Ra=1.6µm

has greatly improved the quality of the blade surface.

At the same time, laser precision processing is widely used 20cm 150cm

in the processing of surface microstructure. Zhang JR et al.[7]

used femtosecond laser to process micro-groove structure and Fig. 1. Processing distribution of titanium alloy plates with different surface
nanoscale particles on TC4. Cangueiro LT et al.[8] used roughness.
femtosecond lasers to process LIPSS structures on Ni/Ti cross-
overlapping multilayer materials with a periodic thickness of First, through abrasive belt grinding, different surface
25 nm and 12 nm, respectively. Zhou SQ et al.[9] investigated roughness is obtained (Ra=0.1 µm, Ra=0.4 µm, Ra=0.8 µm,
the change law of femtosecond laser-induced surface micro- Ra=1.6 µm). Then with the same parameters, U-shaped
nano structure of titanium alloy using different laser energy structure is formed by laser in different roughness surface, and
density and pulse numbers. Symietz C. and Kruger J.[10] used observe the influence of surface roughness on formation
femtosecond lasers to fabricate periodic humped surfaces and structure regularity by laser.

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 Yun Huang et al. / Procedia CIRP 89 (2020) 277–281 279

2.3 Experimental equipment each required roughness, as shown in Table 2.

The experiment uses a seven-axis, six-link adaptive CNC Table 2. Belt grinding processing.
belt grinding tool system jointly developed by Chongqing Processing
Samhida Grinding Machine Co., Ltd. and Chongqing The first The second The third
processing processing processing
University. Due to the weak rigidity of the contact wheel itself, Old ceramic New ceramic
during the grinding of the belt and the elastic movement of the Ra=1.6 µm non
abrasive belt P240 abrasive belt P240
U-axis in the Z-axis in a certain range, the machine tool has Ra=0.8 µm
Hollow ball Old blue nylon Old blue nylon
certain 'flexible' characteristics in the processing of blades and abrasive belt belt belt
Old blue nylon Old blue nylon
other complex curved surfaces. This also gives the machine the Ra=0.4 µm Old red nylon belt
belt belt
feature of avoiding over cutting and over grinding. The Ra=0.1 µm
Old grey nylon
non non
abrasive belt grinding tool system is mainly composed of belt
abrasive belt, contact wheels and contact rods. The contact
between the grinding tool system and the blade is floating, and Fig. 3 shows the different roughness surfaces by the belt
the small displacement of the grinding head will not cause a grinding process. It can be seen that the processed surface has
large change in the grinding pressure on the blade, as shown in obvious abrasive grain scratches, and the scratch distribution is
Fig. 2(a). irregular. This is because the abrasive particles are unevenly
distributed on the surface of the abrasive belt, which causes the
For the laser processing, as shown in Fig. 2(b), a pulsed : Yb:
position of the abrasive particles entering at each moment to be
YAG disk laser source (TruMicro 5050 of Trumpf GmbH,
different from that of the previous moment. And the effective
Germany) with a wavelength of 1030 nm, maximum pulse
grinding abrasive particles also change at each moment, which
frequency of 400 kHz, pulse energies up to 125 μJ and a pulse collectively results in the irregularity of the machined surfaces.
duration of 6.7 ps and a nearly Gaussian beam profile (M²≤ It limits its machining to a regular surface. At the same time, it
1.3, dianmeter is 15 µm) was used. Through pre-experimental can be seen that as the ground surface roughness increases, the
analysis, it is found that the scan times are set at 20 times and abrasive grain scratches become deeper and the consistency
the each trace interval is 16.7 s, which can form the U-shaped becomes worse. This is due to the difference in the abrasive
size required for this experiment. The specific processing belts used to form the surface. For the surface roughness of 0.1
parameters are shown in Table 1. μm and 0.4 µm, the first used belt is a nylon belt. For the surface
roughness of 0.8µm and 1.6µm, the first used belts are hollow
ball abrasive belts and ceramic abrasive belts respectively. The
composition of the latter two belts are significantly rougher
than that of nylon belts thus ground surface is rougher.

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of (a) laser processing. (b) abrasive belt grinding.

Table 1. Laser processing parameters.

F/(kHz) v/(mm/s) P/(W) Scan times
400 1000 4 20
(a)
3. Result and discussion

3.1 Grinding surface analysis

The detection in this experiment uses the white light

interferometer module of Rtec instrument's multi-functional
friction and wear tester to indicate the processed surface
structure This detection is an optical non-contact surface
detection technology, which does not damage the surface. Fig.
3 shows different surface roughness by belt grinding. The
surface roughness values need to be tested for grinding—
measurement—replacement belt—retesting until the required (b)
surface roughness value is obtained. According to experience,
four different abrasive belts were first selected to process the
surface, and then a series of experiments were performed to
obtain the types of abrasive belts required for processing the

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 280 Yun Huang et al. / Procedia CIRP 89 (2020) 277–281

features of belt grinding remained in the U-shaped tip plane,

indicating that laser machining had little effect on the original
surface around the processed area. Because the laser processing
has high precision, high quality, high resolution, its pulse width
is very small. The generated heat has no time to transfer
because the processing is ultra short. The thermal impact area
around the processing is very small, almost negligible. And the
origional scratches also contribute to the different values of the
width.
123 0.1 0.4 0.8 1.6
(c)
121

Width / (µm)
119
117
115
113
1 2 3 4 5 6
Test points

Fig. 5. Width of U-shaped structures on laser machined surfaces with

different roughness.
(d)
5.00%
Fig. 3. Different surface roughness under abrasive belt grinding: (a) Ra=0.1 0.1 0.4 0.8 1.6
µm; (b) Ra=0.4 µm; (c) Ra=0.8 µm; (d) Ra=1.6 µm. 4.00%
Width error

3.00%
3.2 Analysis U-shaped structure by laser 2.00%

In picosecond laser processing, subwavelength periodic 1.00%

stripes are usually formed on the surface. For the mechanism 0.00%
of its formation, there are three kinds of theories: laser 1 2 3 4 5 6
Test point
scattering and surface wave interference effect theory[11],
laser and surface plasmon interference theory[12] and the
theory of self-organization[13]. The formed stripe structure is Fig. 6. Width errors of U-shaped structures on laser machined surfaces with
vertical to scanning direction. With the increase of scanning different roughness.
times, another micron-scale stripe parallel to the scanning
direction will be generated. This is because of the increase of 70 0.1 0.4 0.8 1.6
scanning times and the overlapping of laser pulses, which 65
makes the surface produce the stripe in the same direction as
Depth/ (µm)

60
the scanning direction. This hierarchical structure with the
superposition of two stripes makes the surface of laser 55
processing more applicable. 50
45
1 2 3 4 5 6
Test point

Fig. 7. Depth of U-shaped structures on surfaces with different roughness

processed by laser.

30.00%
0.1 0.4 0.8 1.6
25.00%
Depth error

20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
Fig. 4. Typically morphologies of laser assisted belt grinding of Ra=1.6 µm. 5.00%
0.00%
Fig. 4 shows the U-shaped structure obtained by laser 1 2 3 4 5 6
scanning with 20 scan times, whose direction is the same as the Test point
scanning direction. The observed stripe structures formed on
the four roughness surfaces is consistent, and it can be seen that Fig. 8. Depth errors of U-shaped structures on different roughness surfaces
there are many rough bumps at the bottom of the stripe, which processed by laser.
are the marks of laser pulse processing. In addition, the surface

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 Yun Huang et al. / Procedia CIRP 89 (2020) 277–281 281

As shown is Fig. 5 and Fig. 7, there are four points randomly the laser abrasive belt processing experiment was carried out
selected after laser machining on different roughness surfaces, for titanium alloy plates with different surface roughness.
width s and depth h measured by white light interferometer is Finally, the U-shaped structure of shark skin was analysed by
depicted in the two figures respectively. It can be seen that the white light interferometer
width s ranges from 113 to 120 μm and the depth h ranges from The experimental results show that the surface structure is
48 to 70 μm. The width and depth were similar to the actual mainly U-shaped structure and the ratio shows that the larger
sharkskin parameters, but both were lower than the real values. the surface roughness is, the worse the stability of the U-shaped
When the surface roughness were 0.8 μm and 1.6 μm, the width structure on the laser-machined surface is. In the laser
and depth fluctuated less and the consistency were better. From machining of four surfaces with different roughness, the error
the mean values of width and depth, it can be seen that the U- is analysed to be within 10%, and the formed surface depth to
shaped width with upper surface roughness of 0.4 µm and 0.8 width ratio is h/s=0.4~0.6 which is close to the optimal value.
µm in the width direction is slightly higher than the U-shaped Therefore, this method can be applied to the processing of U-
width with surface roughness of 0.1 µm and 1.6 µm. In the shaped structures and can significantly improve the surface
depth direction, the depth decreases as the surface roughness integrity characteristics.
increases. Fig. 6 and Fig. 8 show the errors of U-shaped
structure in width and depth, respectively. It can be seen that Acknowledgements
the width error is less than 5% and the depth error is less than
10% (except the second measurement point with roughness of This work was supported in part by the National Natural
0.4 µm, which can be removed due to too large depth), Science Foundation of China under Grant 51705047, in part by
indicating that the accuracy of laser machining is relatively the Key Research and Development Plan of Jiangsu under
reliable. Grant SBE2017020101, in part by the National Science and
In the width and depth direction of the workpiece, the width Technology Major Project under Grant 2017-VII-0002-0095,
and depth produced by the laser on the four different surfaces in part by the Technological Innovation and Application
are nearly the same respectively. Because the width and depth Demonstration of Chongqing under Grant cstc2018jszx-
processed by laser are much larger than the roughness in scale, cyzdX0061, and in part by the Fundamental Research Funds
the U-shaped structure of laser machining is almost unaffected for the Central Universities under Grant 2018CDQYCD0038.
by the surface roughness.
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