Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100

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Electrochimica Acta
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/electacta

Study of a novel cathode tool structure for improving heat removal

in electrochemical micro-machining
Jing Wu, Hong Wang ∗ , Xiang Chen, Ping Cheng, Guifu Ding, Xiaolin Zhao, Yi Huang
Science and Technology on Nano/Micro Fabrication Laboratory, Research Institute of Micro/Nano Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, People’s
Republic of China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, the effects of a hollow structure of cathode tool and radial flow of electrolyte on heat
Received 7 February 2012 removal are studied using COMSOL software. A multi-physics (electrical field, flow field and heat transfer)
Received in revised form 20 April 2012 model, which implement the bilateral interactions with customized PDE, is proposed to simulate the
Accepted 20 April 2012
EMM process with a moving cathode tool. The ALE method is used to track the moving interface. The
Available online 4 May 2012
simulations show that the electrolyte flow rate and flushing time are the most important factors for the
heat removal. A hollow structure of the cathode tool is proposed to improve the stability of flow rate,
Keywords:
which will remove the heat generated during the EMM process effectively.
EMM
Hollow electrode © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Heat removal
Multi-physics
Pulse rate

1. Introduction
The growing demand for micro parts and molds has increased
the importance of micro-machining technologies such as micro
electrical discharge machining, micro electrochemical machining,
and micro-electrochemical discharge machining. Among these pro-
cesses, electrochemical micro machining (EMM) is used widely as
it allows manufacturers to shape hard metals at a high material
removal rate, without affecting the tensile strength of the work-
piece material and its other physical properties, while ensuring a
low surface roughness [1]. Although the process of EMM is diffi-
cult to predict, many mathematical approaches such as boundary
elements method (BEM), finite difference method (FDM) and finite
element method (FEM) have been used to analyze the electrical
and fluid properties in the process. And many numerical models
have also been proposed, ranging from the most commonly used
potential models to multi-ion transport and reaction models [2,3].
Deconinck et al. [4] simulated the influence of the temperature
on the uniformity or copying quality of the removal rate. Hourng
et al. [5–7] calculated the temperature distributions in the elec-
trolyte in one or two dimensions. Bhattacharyya and Munda [8]
demonstrated that a significant metal removal rate and minimal
overcutting could be obtained with the proper operating potential
and electrolytic concentration and sufficient processing time. Kock
et al. [9] verified the effects of pulse width on fabrication accu-
racy. Lee et al. [10] demonstrated the effect of pulse rate and the
inter-electrode gap (IEG) value on the concentration distribution in
IEG during the EMM process. It is well known that the EMM pro-
cess is influenced by numerous factors such as temperature, IEG,
electrolytic concentration, and operating potential. In the process,
several physics are involved and flow field play an important role
in the conduction of current between electrodes and maintaining
the stability of the environment. The structure of cathode is a criti-
cal factor for the flow field excepting for the machining shape. The
literatures mentioned above all used a solid cathode tool in the pro-
cess. However, these solid tools have several disadvantages such as
low copying accuracy and asymmetry. A hollow structure of the
cathode tool, resulting in high copying curacy and enhanced sym-
metry, has been adopted in traditional large scale machining. Since
the adverse influence of decrease in flow rate is more serious in
EMM, the adoption of hollow cathode tool would be a significant
improvement.
In the following sections, the paper discusses a multi-physics
model that presents some comparative simulations to study their
sensitive relevance on temperature distribution in EMM process.
2. Theoretical model

EMM is a current controlled electrolytic process. Typically, a

workpiece (anode) is connected to a tool (cathode) and immersed
∗ Corresponding author. in an ionic solution in a reactor. When a potential difference is
E-mail address: qfwj10@163.com (H. Wang). applied between electrodes, the oxidation and reduction reaction

0013-4686/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2012.04.078
 J. Wu et al. / Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100 95

will take place on anode and cathode, respectively. The metallic

ions of the anodic dissolution will migrate toward the cathode and
form the metallic hydride and oxide after reacting with the OH− . At
the same time, oxygen is generated on the anode while hydrogen
is generated on the cathode. By feeding the shaped cathode toward
the workpiece, the reverse shape of the tool is copied. In order to
attain a more specialized study of the temperature variation in the
EMM process, the aspects of concentration and gas evolution are
not considered here. As the electrode reaction and current den-
sity are strongly dependent on temperature, and heat, generated
by the electrochemical reaction, is mainly removed by the elec-
trolyte flow. It was reasonable to consider the electrolyte only in
the view of obtaining the temperature distribution. Electrodes are
usually good heat conductors, approximately 100 times better than
the electrolyte and it is logical to regard the electrode–electrolyte
interface as outer boundaries (reference temperature).
During this process, several controllable parameters such as,
operating potential, flow rate of electrolyte, IEG, and electrolyte
composition, play an important role on the copying quality. The
structure of cathode tool, which is a critical factor for maintaining
flow rate in the process, is transformed to hollow from solid.

2.1. Model assumptions

The EMM process involves several interactive physics, such as

flow field, electric field and heat transfer. First, a model of elec-
trodes with given dimensions is needed to attain the potential
distribution. And then an electrolyte model with potential U, tem-
perature T and electrolyte velocity v is developed according to the Fig. 1. Geometry model with a downward feeding cathode tool; the electrolyte flow
region is noted as gray area: (a) initial model and (b) simplified simulation model.
experiments. An established heat transfer model acts as a bridge
coupling the two mentioned above. In order to obtain coupling
physics results, a multi-domain method is used. The anode interface and cathode interface are taken as equipo-
To simplify the proposed model, several assumptions are made tential surfaces, denoted as Va and Vc , for solving the charge
as follows: conservation

(1) The EMM process is ideal. The anodic dissolution will take place
as long as a potential difference is applied between electrodes,
and it depends only on temperature.
(2) The model is isothermal. The thermal conductivity of the elec-
trolyte was assumed to be a constant.
∇ · (∇ U) = 0 (2)
Va , Vc are imposed as constant potential (V). Meanwhile, a tem-
perature dependent model, in which the electrical conductivity is
linearly related to temperature T, is selected to obtain the potential
distribution. The relation between  and T is introduced:

2.2. Geometry model  = [1 + ˛(T − Tref )] (3)

where Tref is the reference temperature and a conductance constant

The geometry used in this study is presented in Fig. 1, a 2D ˛ indicates the degree of temperature dependence.
channel, comprised a cathode surface (no. 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9), an A typical potential distribution is obtained, shown in Fig. 2. In
anode boundary [12], containing the electrolyte flowing between order to decrease the influence of stray current density in process-
them. The channel is 150 ␮m in width and has a length of 600 ␮m. ing, the sidewall insulation is adopted.
The inter-electrode gap (IEG), is set to 20 ␮m. Radius of the hollow
structure is 50 ␮m. In addition, the hollow tool feeds down with a
constant rate vc in the process.
The anode surface, which is in contact with the electrolyte, is
fully active with a constant potential applied to it; while the cath-
ode tool is side-insulated, i.e., boundaries 3 and 9 are electrically
insulated from the electrolyte.
The electrolyte flows in radial flow at a uniform rate profile, i.e.,
flows in from AB and exits from CD and EF. In order to avoid the
convergence in the solving process, the Heaviside function [10] of
the velocity distribution is set as the initial value at the inlet, AB.

2.3. Electrical model

The potential between the electrodes comply with Laplace equa-

tion,
Fig. 2. Potential (V) distribution in the vicinity of the cathode tool after 1 s of metal
∇2 = 0 (1) dissolution processing; colored curves represent isopotential curves. (For interpre-
tation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the
i.e., the potential field is a steady current field. web version of this article.)
96 J. Wu et al. / Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100
Fig. 3. Electrolyte flow field in different geometry structure in the processing. The inlet velocity of is 0.5 m/s .The color-scales represent the magnitude of the velocity: (a)
the solid structure cathode tool, side flow and (b) the hollow structure cathode tool, radial flow. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader
is referred to the web version of this article.)
In electrical model discussed above, the heat released in the
EMM process, which will be discussed in Section 2.5 in detail, is
bound to heat the electrolyte up rapidly. In order to promptly
remove the heat and prevent the electrolyte from boiling, an appro-
priate and effective flow field becomes a necessity.
2.4. Fluid flow model
The electrolyte velocity v is obtained by solving the incompress-
ible laminar Navier-Stokes equations,
∇ ·v=0
 
∂v
 + v · ∇v = −∇ p + v
∂t
where p is the pressure (Pa),  is the electrolyte density (kg/m3 )
and  is the dynamic viscosity (kg/(m s)).
The effects of different structure of cathode tool (solid and hol-
low) on flow rate are simulated, shown in Fig. 3.
The flow field using solid cathode tool is presented in Fig. 3(a).
The workpiece (anode) is connected to the solid tool (cathode) and
immersed in an ionic solution in an electrolyzer. The electrolyte
is pumped from the left side, in other words, the type of flow is
side flow. The electrolyte flow passage between electrodes gradu-
ally becomes a small ‘U’ channel from a, relatively, wide rectangle
channel as the tool feeding. Velocity declines rapidly to 0.1 m/s,
accounting for one fifth of the initial value, which would seriously
impact the convection effect on heat removal. Hence, it is necessary
to modify the solid structure to maintain the stability of the flow
rate. As shown in Fig. 3(b), a hollow structure, allowing radial flow,
is adopted in this simulation to maintain the stability of flow rate.
It is known that dynamic viscosity, density and many other flow
properties vary with temperature. And a mathematical relation
needs to be developed for studying the interaction between these
properties and temperature T. In our simulations, values of these
properties at different temperatures are fitted using MATLAB. The
equations are obtained as follows:
 = 0.9498 · e−0.0524·T + 0.08352e−0.01115·T
 = 1101 · e −0.001076·T
+ (−101)e −0.01208·T
2.5. Electrolyte heat transfer model
In electrolyte, temperature T is found by solving internal energy
balance,
Cp v · ∇ T = ∇ · (k∇ T ) + P J + P dl
where Cp is the specific heat capacity (J/(kg K)), k is the thermal
conductivity and v is the velocity of the electrolyte flow (m/s). The
left side term in equation accounts for heat removed by the con-
vection effect. PJ (W/m3 ) represents Joule heating in the bulk of the
electrolyte and it can be attained by Joule’s law,
P J = E · j =  (∇ U)2 (9)
where 
is the electrical conductivity(S m−1 ),
U is the potential
difference applied over the electrodes and E is the electric field.
In addition, there is another heat source Pdl (W/m3 ), which rep-
resents the heat generated by the electrochemical reaction in the
double layers (DLs). Maximum heat is generated when enthalpy
changes are neglected, yielding
(4)
P dl = j (10)
(5) where  is the overpotential (V) and j is the reaction current den-
sity (A/m2 ). This polarization behavior is liberalized with respect to
overpotential for electrode reactions:
(V − U) − Q
j= (11)
R
where R is the polarization resistance ( /m2 ); Q is the onset of
polarization (V), the minimum overpotential to initiate the reac-
tion.
From the correlation between the reaction current density j and
the temperature T [22], it is reasonable to introduce the following
equation:
j = j[1 + ˇ(T − Tref )] (12)
where ˇ is a constant that determines the magnitude of tempera-
ture dependence, j is the instant reaction current density varying
with T.
The modification of reaction current density j ultimately reflects
on the heat production from the reaction, and the heat boundary
condition transfer to the expression as follows:
H  = H[1 + ˇ(T − Tref )] (13)
where H , and H represent the instant heat production and the ini-
tial value, respectively. From measurements [4], it is known that H
approximately equals 106 (W/m2 ), which is set as the initial value
(6) of H to simplify the numerical model.
(7) In the EMM process, the heat removal is controlled by the
convection flush of electrolyte flow and by heat conduction result-
ing from temperature difference. However, the contribution of
heat conduction is less than 0.1% [4], and the interfaces between
the electrodes and electrolyte are considered as outer boundaries
(temperature reference). In this sense, it is logical to consider the
convection influence only in the view of obtaining the temperature
(8) distribution during the EMM process.
A typical simulation result for the coupling of the temperature
and flow field can be obtained, shown in Fig. 4. As discussed in
Sections 2.3 and 2.4, the velocity at the inlet is uniformly set to a
 J. Wu et al. / Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100 97

Fig. 4. Temperature (◦ C) distribution in the vicinity of the cathode tool after 1 s of metal dissolution processing.

constant vertical vin , and no-slip conditions are imposed on other
boundaries. A constant pressure is applied on the outlets. The radius
of the hollow structure and the inlet velocity are set as 50 ␮m and
0.5 m/s; other parameters used can be found in Section 2.7.
2.6. Moving mesh (ALE)
In order to track the movement of the anode boundary and
the feed of the cathode tool, the computational geometry has
to be realigned with the new position of the electrodes timely.
Meanwhile, the computational mesh alters inevitably. And the
arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method, which is an interme-
diate between the Lagrangian and Eulerian methods, is selected for
implementing the deformed mesh and moving boundaries, as it
allows moving boundaries without the need for the movement of
mesh.
The anode boundary moves downward at the rate of va , which
can be obtained by the following equation:
va = ωj
where j is the current density (A/m2 ),
ω is the volume equiva-
lent (m3 /(A s)), and  is a dimensionless constant that represents
dissolution efficiency.
The feeding rate of the cathode tool tip vc , and the workpiece
dissolution rate va are imposed as Dirichlet boundary conditions to
implement ALE method.
In order to maintain a relatively stable IEG, the cathode tool
moves at a uniform velocity, which is chosen to be 1.2 × 10−5 (m/s)
according to the experiments (see Table 2).
3. Simulation results and discussion
Several comparative simulations were performed with the
multi-physical model shown in Fig. 1. The simulations were run
in transient mode using the Heaviside function of velocity to avoid
the convergence in solving.
3.1. Influence of hollow structure
The influence of the hollow structure is investigated. The com-
parative results are shown in Fig. 5. When a solid tool or a small
radius of a hollow tool was chosen, the weak convection cannot
effectively remove the heat in IEG during the process. The black and
red curves in Fig. 6 show that in the above two cases, the temper-
ature rises sharply and exceeds 35 ◦ C within 600 ␮s, exhibiting an
(14)
ascending tendency throughout. T increases slightly and presents

2.7. Parameters and boundary conditions

The parameters used in simulations are listed in Table 1. The

dynamic viscosity and density are considered as temperature
dependent variables, as mentioned in Section 2.4. The inlet velocity
is 0.5 m/s, and the type of flow is radial. The outer reference tem-
perature and the initial temperature are assumed to be 20 ◦ C (room
temperature). The temperature dependence factor ˛ for electrical
conductivity of the electrolyte is taken as 0.02, which is usually
adopted for electrolyte solutions in EMM [20].

Table 1
Parameters and coefficients of the numerical model.

Parameters Values

Potential difference (˚/V) 5

Pulse period (␮s) 200
IEG value (␮m) 20
Electrolyte electric conductivity (/S m−1 ) 1.542 (initial)
Thermal conductivity (/W m−1 K−1 ) 0.58
Radius of hollow cathode (radi/␮m) 10, 30, 50, 70
Duty cycle (/[1])
Temperature reference (Tref /◦ C)
Inlet flow rate of electrolyte (vin /m/s)
0.2, 0.5, 0.8
Fig. 5. Temperature distribution with different radius of hollow cathode tools after
20
1 s of processing; uin = 0.5 m/s: (a) solid cathode tool, side flow; (b) radius = 10 ␮m,
0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 0.5
radial flow; (c) radius = 30 ␮m, radial flow; and (d) radius = 70 ␮m, radial flow.
98 J. Wu et al. / Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100

Table 2
Boundary conditions of the model.

Boundary settings of the electrical model (ec)

Boundary no. 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 4, 5, 7, 8 12
Boundary cond. Electric insulation Electric potential Ground
Setting n·J=0 V = V0 V=0

Boundary settings of the fluid model (spf)

Boundary no. 6 1, 11 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10
Boundary cond. Inlet Outlet No slip wall
Setting v = −vin · n p=0 v=0
Boundary settings of the heat transfer model (ht)
Boundary no. 4, 5, 7, 8 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12 6
Boundary cond. Heat flux Thermal insulation Temperature reference
Setting H = H[1 + ˇ(T − Tref )] −n · (− k · ∇ T) = 0 Tref

flat trends only when the radius of hollow structure increases. One
can also see that T goes up mildly in the beginning and then becomes
stable at 25 ◦ C when the radius increases to 30 ␮m or higher, which
can provide a stable temperature environment for the process.
Although the convection effect can be enhanced gradually with
an increase in the radius of the hollow structure, the adverse results
are much more conspicuous after the radius exceeding 30 ␮m, as
shown in Figs. 6 and 7. An increase in radius over 30 ␮m brings a
decrease of one or tenths in temperature only; while the bulge in
anode profile becomes much larger, even reach 10 ␮m at a radius
of 70 ␮m. From above, one can conclude that the hollow structure
improves the stability of flow rate and the radius cannot be too
large to prevent the seriously adverse effects of bulge.

3.2. Influence of inlet velocity

Fig. 8 investigates the influence of the inlet velocity vin on tem-

perature variation during the process.
From the results, one can see that T rises rapidly, as large as 10 ◦ C
only in 200 ␮s, which is due to the weak convection. And the growth Fig. 7. Anode profile opposite the hollow parts of cathode tools after 1 s of process-
rate of temperature even shows a rising trend over the processing ing; uin = 0.5 m/s.
time. In contrast, the growth decreases a lot when the inlet velocity
vin was imposed as 0.5 m/s. And the rising trend also becomes flat,
which can facilitate a stable environment for improving the copying temperature decreasing from 25 ◦ C to 21 ◦ C is about 200 ␮s, which
quality. can be seen as a reference for selecting the flushing time. And then
The dotted curves represent the decrease in T from 25 ◦ C,
and there is almost no decline in T if the flow rate is under
0.1 m/s. When the velocity of 0.5 m/s is applied, the time for the

Fig. 6. Temperature variation curves with different radius of hollow cathode tools
at a certain site in IEG over processing time; uin = 0.5 m/s.
Fig. 8. Temperature rise according to different flow rate over processing time at
a certain site in IEG: the different colors correspond to different flow rates; solid
curves represent temperature increase; and dotted curves represent temperature
decrease. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
 J. Wu et al. / Electrochimica Acta 75 (2012) 94–100
Fig. 9. Variation in temperature at a certain site in IEG over processing time under
different duty cycles; pulse rate = 200 ␮s: solid curves represent uin = 0.5 m/s; dotted
curves represent uin = 0.1 m/s.
the introduction of pulse rate becomes necessary to prevent the
excessive increase in T in the process.
3.3. Influence of duty cycle
Duty cycle (duty factor) is the ratio of on/off time, as shown in
equation:
ton
Duty cycle = (15)
ton + toff
The importance of pulse rate applied to operating potential is inves-
tigated.
Variations in the temperature dependent parameters are
acceptable and can be regarded as a constant when temperature
T varies in a range of 5 ◦ C. In this study, the processing time for an
increase of 5 ◦ C in temperature is adopted as the maximal pulse
width, and the time for T dropping to Tref from 25 ◦ C, is selected
as the minimum pulse off time. The two eventually determine the
value of the duty cycle. The results (mentioned in Section 3.2) sug-
gest that the temperature T rise 5 ◦ C after 100 ␮s of EMM processing
(shown by solid curves) and can be cooled down to 21 ◦ C within
100 ␮s (shown by dotted curves).Therefore, it is reasonable to set
the pulse period 200 ␮s in the simulation. The optimization of the
duty cycle is also investigated.
As shown in Fig. 9, in contrast to an increase of 17 ◦ C at the flow
rate of 0.1 m/s, temperature T only rises approximately 6 ◦ C when
vin = 0.5 m/s (duty cycle = 0.8), which could mainly maintain the sta-
bility of the electrolyte properties. This result verifies the necessity
of the adoption of hollow structure to avoid significant decrease
of flow rate in the EMM process. In addition, T has a big rise and is
trapped in IEG when duty cycle exceeds 0.5. The difference in T with
different duty cycle (0.8, 0.5) reached 11 ◦ C within only 1000 ␮s of
the processing time. And it probably increases to a value that can-
not be ignored as the processing time extends. So it is important
to confine the duty cycle to prevent the excessive increase in T.
However, undesirable decrease of dissolution rate would occur if
the pulse-on time were too short. In order to balance the require-
ments of the two, medium pulse rate and duty cycle become fairly
necessary.
99
4. Conclusions
In this work, a novel structure of cathode tool using in EMM was
presented and a simplified and specialized model was proposed.
The laws involved in the coupled model, such as charge conver-
sation, internal energy balance and the Navier-Stokes equations
for incompressible viscous flow, are solved using a multi-domain
approach, which implement the interactions by partial differential
equations (PDE). The ALE method is applied to describe the moving
electrodes interface and the quality of the grid in transient is also
ensured by the automatically re-mesh technology.
The simulations confirm that electrolyte flow rate and convec-
tion time are of paramount importance in heat removal during
the EMM process, as most of the generated heat is removed by
electrolyte flow. It is also shown that the hollow cathode with an
interior channel, compared with the solid cathode tool, is more con-
ductive to fluid flow. The difference of the damping effect of the
fluid flow in the gradually shrinking passage with the two cath-
ode structures clearly illustrates the necessity to replace the solid
cathode with a hollow one.
Although most of the heat in IEG can be removed, the temper-
ature will rise due to the accumulation of residual heat. And the
convection would require abundant flushing time to confine the
residual heat to a certain range. Pulse rate plays an important role
in providing sufficient heat removal time. Pulse off time, which
must be longer than the minimal time for bringing down the tem-
perature, is found an critical factor to maintain plenty of flushing
time.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Advanced Research Project
under Grant (625010105), the Program of Science and Technology
Commission of Shanghai Municipality under Grant (11DZ2290203)
and the Cultivating Foundation for Innovation Engineering Program
of the Ministry of Education of China under Grant (708037).
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