NANO: Brief Reports and Reviews Vol. 6, No. 6 (2011) 561–568 c  World Scientific Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S1793292011002950 COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF THE NANOELECTRICAL DISCHARGE MACHINING PROCESS G. TAHMASEBIPOUR * Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran m-tahmasebipour@araku.ac.ir Y. TAHMASEBIPOUR and M. GHOREISHI Faculty of Mechanical Engineering K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran Received 17 June 2011 Accepted 5 October 2011 Electrical discharge machining (EDM) process is one of the advanced machining processes that can machine the various complex shapes from all conductor and semiconductor materials. Wide and diverse applications of Micro-EDM process in microfabrication and micro- to nano- miniaturization tendency is promising application of Nano-EDM process in nanofabrication. The Nano-EDM is a precise, sensitive and costly process. Therefore, simulation of nanocrater pro- duced by each spark in this process prevents spending extra time and cost to perform Nano-EDM process through trial and error method. In this paper nanocrater machined by the Nano-EDM process on a gold nanofilm is simulated under practically experimental conditions. Radius, depth and volume of the nanocrater are evaluated versus process conditions (average power and pulse duration) and workpiece thickness (50 nm, 100 nm and 300 nm). It is observed that radius of the nanocrater is increased exponentially with increasing spark pulse duration. Also, depth, volume of the removed material from the workpiece surface and material removal rate (MRR) are increased with increasing consumed energy by each spark. By increasing thickness of the nanofilm, volume of the removed material and dimensions of the nanocrater are decreased. Keywords : Electrical discharge machining (EDM); Nano-EDM; nanomachining; simulation. 1. Introduction Electrical discharge machining (EDM) process is one of the modern machining processes whereby different workpieces with various complicated geo- metric forms can be produced from a wide range of soft and hard as well as conductive and semi- conductive materials. In the EDM process, result- ing thermal energy from electrical spark is used to remove material from the workpiece surface. The amount of material removed from the workpiece surface depends on the consumed energy level in the spark. Therefore, decreasing consumed energy by each spark may lead to reduction of dimen- sions of the machined craters. Furthermore, the absence of any contiguity between tool and work- piece as well as lack of any mechanical force on * Corresponding author. 561