Reliable and cost-effective machining of advanced ceramics is crucially imp
ortant for them to be widely used in a number of critical engineering appli
cations. The potential of Rotary Ultrasonic Machining (RUM) process has bee
n recognized as one of the reliable and cost-effective machining methods fo
r advanced ceramics and commercial machinery is available for the process.
One limitation of the commercial RUM machines is that only circular holes c
an be efficiently machined. An approach to extend the RUM process to fare m
illing of ceramics was proposed and the development of the experimental app
aratus as well as the preliminary experimental results were published earli
er in this journal. As a follow-up, this paper will present the results of
an experimental investigation of the newly-developed Rotary Ultrasonic Face
Milling (RUFM) process. In this investigation, a five-variable two-level f
ractional factorial design is used to conduct the experiments. The purpose
of these experiments is to reveal the main effects as well as the interacti
on effects of the process parameters on the process outputs such as Materia
l Removal Rate (MRR), cutting force, material removal mode and surface roug
hness. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.