Material removal characteristics in submerged pulsating air jet polishing process

•Jet instability of a submerged airflow beam entrains and drives abrasives in slurry to realize stable polishing removal.•Weak stagnation zone formed by low viscosity air jet can be broken to produce Gaussian removal footprints.•Analysis of air flow structure shows that material removal mainly occurs outside the inviscid core region.•High material removal is linked to entrained and accelerated slurry particles at the inviscid core boundary of the jet.•Material removal controllability and applicability to deterministic polishing are ascertained.