A spiral-rotating abrasive flow polishing technology was presented and discussed in this paper to address the issue of precision polishing of internal surface of the cylinder for 6061 aluminium alloy. The effect of the spiral rotating abrasive flow on the polishing quality, i.e. polishing efficiency and uniformity, was analysed both numerically and experimentally. The relative equations involved in the spiral-rotating abrasive flow were first developed to simulate the particle trajectories by considering the centrifugal force, Coriolis force, Magnus force and Saffman force with Computational Fluid Dynamics method. Numerical simulation shows that the tangential velocity of the abrasive particles near the internal surface increases significantly with an increase of the rotation speed of the constraint module, and due to the spiral-rotating action the near-wall abrasive particles exhibits random direction and uniform magnitude at velocity, such that this technology is expected to enhance the polishing efficiency and uniformity. Experimental study indicates that the line roughness on the target surface decreases with an increase in the rotation speed due to the increased tangential velocity of impacting particles that enhance the micro-cutting action on the target surface, and hence, resulting in a better surface finish. While the material removal rate increases with an increase of the rotation speed due to the larger kinetic energy brought into the process by the rotation of the constraint module, so that the polishing efficiency could be significantly improved. These findings from the experiment are in a good agreement with the corresponding simulation results. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.