Although magnetorheological finishing (MRF) is being widely utilized to achieve ultra-smooth optical surfaces, the mechanisms for obtaining such extremely low roughness after the MRF process are not fully understood, especially the impact of finishing stresses. Herein we carefully investigated the relationship between the stresses and surface roughness. Normal stress shows stronger impacts on the surface roughness of fused silica (FS) when compared with the shear stress. In addition, normal stress in the polishing zone was found to be sensitive to the immersion depth of the magnetorheological (MR) fluid. Based on the above, a fine tuning of surface roughness (RMS: 0.22 nm) was obtained. This work fills gaps in understanding about the stresses that influence surface roughness during MRF.
Keywords: force field simulation; magnetorheological finishing; normal stress; surface roughness.