Design and Analysis of Acoustic Horns for Ultrasonic Machining

The acoustic horn plays a very vital part in high energy ultrasonic machining, and its design is critical to the quality and the efficiency of machining. This paper performs the analysis and design of acoustic horns for ultrasonic machining by employing ANSYS finite element software. Firstly, the theoretical dimensions of the horns are calculated and compared to three commercial available horns with different shapes. Moreover, their natural frequencies and amplitudes are obtained through the simulations of ANSYS. Finally, the numerical results are compared with commercial available horns. The results indicate that not only the natural frequencies of horns designed by theoretical models are more close to the vibration frequencies of ultrasonic generators, but also their amplitudes are superior to commercial available horns. Therefore, the trial and error time, for horn machining and dimensional modification of the horn design, can be greatly reduced by the proposed approach of this work.