This paper investigates the removal of material from a surface during polishing with ®xed abrasives. The material removal pro®le prescribes the amount of material removed from the surface along a direction orthogonal to the tool path as a polishing tool is moved along the surface. It depends on the geometry and mechanical properties of the tool and the surface as well as on the polishing condition. A wear index for polishing is introduced to relate the material removal to the polishing condition. On the basis of the wear index, an approach for calculating the material removal pro®le is developed. It assumes that the pressure distribution is Hertzian at the contact between the tool and the surface. Polishing experiments are conducted which consist of polishing convex surfaces with cylindrical tools and concave surfaces with spherical tools. The proposed approach has been con®rmed by measurements of material removal pro®les in these experiments.

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