Wear behavior of copper material removal during fluid jet polishing: A comparative study between experiment and simulation

As a crucial part in micro-electromechanical manufacture, local ultra-precision processing of highly ductile copper is expected to be realized by fluid jet polishing (FJP), which widely utilized in optical elements. Since copper exhibits different wear behavior from stiff and brittle material, there is currently no abrasive wear prediction model applicable for copper to investigate the polishing mechanism. This research reveals that the copper material removal is dominated by deformation wear rather than cutting wear through abrasive jet impact experiments and localized wear scars analysis. A three-dimensional gas-liquid-particle triphasic wear model for copper in FJP is developed by considering impact energy and wear mechanism simultaneously. Ultimately, validation assessments at various working pressures and impingement angles achieve the goodness-of-fit up to 0.92–0.97 in quantitative comparison between simulations and experimental measurements, which demonstrate the wear prediction ability of the proposed model. This investigation facilitates a better understanding of copper wear mechanism and provides theoretical guidance for FJP process optimization.