Formation of ultra-fine grained materials by machining and the characteristics of the deformation fields

Formation of ultra-fine structure in several materials by severe plastic deformation has been studied by plane strain machining. The microstructure generated in machined chips was characterized by optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy as ultra-fine grains. A theoretical model was adopted to evaluate large plastic deformation in the primary deformation zone, the results show that the typical shear strains generated at the shear plane are in the range of 2–10. A more realistic finite element model was developed to characterize the deformation field associated with chip formation in plain orthogonal machining. The numerical results show that most of the grain refinement associated with the formation of ultra-fine grained chip can be attributed to the large shear strain imposed in the deformation zone. It could be feasible to take machining as a method to preparing ultra-fine grained materials and a type of experiment method to study severe plastic deformation.     

Investigations of yield stress,fracture toughness,and energy distribution in high speed orthogonal cutting

This paper presents a novel prediction method of the yield stress and fracture toughness for ductile metal materials through the metal cutting process based on Williams' Model [38]. The fracture toughness of the separation between the segments in serrated chips in high speed machining is then deduced. In addition, an energy conservation equation for high speed machining process, which considers the energy of new created workpiece surfaces, is established. The fracture energy of serrated chips is taken into the developed energy conservation equation. Five groups of experiments are carried out under the cutting speeds of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500 m/min. The cutting forces are measured using three-dimensional dynamometer and the relevant geometrical parameters of chips are measured with the aid of optical microscope. The experiment results show that the yield stress of machined ductile metal material presents an obviously increasing trend with the cutting speed increasing from 100 to 800 m/min while it decreases when the cutting speed increases to 1500 m/min further. Meanwhile, the fracture toughness between the chip and bulk material displays a slightly increasing tendency. In high speed machining, the fracture toughness of the separation between the segments in serrated chips also presents increasing trend with the increasing cutting speed, whose value is much greater than that between the chip and bulk material. In the end, the distribution of energy spent in cutting process is analyzed which mainly includes such four portions as plastic deformation, friction on the tool–chip interface, new generated surface and chip fracture. The results show that the proportion of plastic deformation is the largest one while it decreases with the cutting speed increasing. However, the proportions of energy spent on new created surface and chip fracture increase due to the increasing of both the chip's fracture area and the fracture toughness.     

Energy dissipation in modulation assisted machining

The specific energy in modulation assisted machining (MAM) – machining with superimposed low frequency (<1000 Hz) modulation in the feed direction – is estimated from direct measurements of cutting forces. Reductions of up to 70% in the energy are observed relative to that in conventional machining, when cutting ductile metals such as copper and Al 6061T6. Evidence based on chip structures and strains, stored energy of cold work, recrystallization, and finite element simulation of chip formation, is presented to show that this reduction is due to smaller strain levels in chips created by MAM. A simple geometric ratio of the length to thickness of the ‘undeformed chip’, which can be estimated a priori from MAM and machining parameters, is shown to be a predictor of the transient chip formation conditions that result in the reduction in specific energy and deformation levels.     

Role of phase transformation in chip segmentation during high speed machining of dual phase titanium alloys

Chip segmentation during machining of titanium alloys is primarily due to adiabatic shear localization associated with thermally driven α–β phase transformation at extremely high speeds. Current constitutive material models used in simulating the machining process ignore the role of phase transformation in shear localization and its influence on the material associated dynamic response. This research presents a new phase approach to chip segmentation that includes a recently developed constitutive material model based on the self-consistent method (SCM) that accounts for material composition, as well as α–β phase transformation, during machining. This SCM-based model is implemented in the finite element framework to validate and predict the effects of starting material property, cutting speeds, uncut chip thicknesses, rake angles, tool radius, and friction coefficients on the strains, temperatures and β volume fractions in chip segmentation. It confirms that cutting speed and uncut chip thickness have great impact, rake angle has less effect, tool radius and friction coefficient have the least effects on chip segmentation. However, tool geometry as well as machining parameters have great influence on the machined surface in terms of temperature magnitude, affected depth and the associated α–β phase transformation.     

Modeling the effects of microstructure in metal cutting

Continuous chips from experimental orthogonal cutting of materials with a heterogeneous microstructure such as 1045 steel are better represented by finite element (FE) models that incorporate material microstructure into the model. A macroscale FE model that incorporated the material microstructure into the model was developed. This approach was found to be more accurate in reflecting the chip formation process than conventional homogeneous models. The heterogenous model showed a rippled chip free surface and defects on the machined surface. The plastic strain was much larger from the heterogeneous FE model versus the homogeneous model due to strain localization during chip formation.     

Characteristics of cutting forces and chip formation in machining of titanium alloys

Chip formation during dry turning of Ti6Al4V alloy has been examined in association with dynamic cutting force measurements under different cutting speeds, feed rates and depths of cut. Both continuous and segmented chip formation processes were observed in one cut under conditions of low cutting speed and large feed rate. The slipping angle in the segmented chip was 55°, which was higher than that in the continuous chip (38°). A cyclic force was produced during the formation of segmented chips and the force frequency was the same as the chip segmentation frequency. The peak of the cyclic force when producing segmented chips was 1.18 times that producing the continuous chip.The undeformed surface length in the segmented chip was found to increase linearly with the feed rate but was independent of cutting speed and depth of cut. The cyclic force frequency increased linearly with cutting speed and decreased inversely with feed rate. The cutting force increased with the feed rate and depth of cut at constant cutting speed due to the large volume of material being removed. The increase in cutting force with increasing cutting speed from 10 to 16 and 57 to 75 m/min was attributed to the strain rate hardening at low and high strain rates, respectively. The decrease in cutting force with increasing cutting speed outside these speed ranges was due to the thermal softening of the material. The amplitude variation of the high-frequency cyclic force associated with the segmented chip formation increased with increasing depth of cut and feed rate, and decreased with increasing cutting speed from 57 m/min except at the cutting speeds where harmonic vibration of the machine occurs.     

Investigation on cooling efficiency of grinding fluids in deep grinding

The cooling efficiency of grinding fluids in deep grinding, at different material removal rates and grinding speeds, has been investigated. Two ‘inverse’ methods have been proposed to determine the level of convective heat transfer coefficients of grinding fluids, by matching the theoretical and experimental grinding fluid burn-out thresholds or matching the theoretical and measured grinding temperatures. Instead of using a constant chip melting temperature to estimate the energy partition to the grinding chips, the chip temperature and chip energy were calculated using the newly developed approach considering the variation of chip size, deformation and heat transfer at the abrasive/work interface. The variation of grinding heat taken away by the process fluids and grinding chips under different process parameters has been calculated, which shows the importance of cooling effects by the grinding fluids and the transition of thermal characteristics of deep grinding from cooling dominant to ‘dry’ grinding regime, where a large percentage of grinding heat is taken away by the grinding chips.     

Extension of basic geometric analysis of 3-D chip forms in metal cutting to chips with obstacle-induced deformation

In machining, chips are known to break mainly because of obstacle-induced deformation. Recently, the present authors had reported on a new and basic geometric analysis of 3-D chips in the absence of deformation after separation from the tool rake face. This paper continues the analysis to cover the full lifecycle of chips subjected to obstacle-induced deformation. The main contributions of this paper are the identification of the geometric properties that are likely to be preserved during obstacle-induced chip deformation and their implications, and the utilisation of these properties to obtain insights concerning the geometry of the tool–chip contact area. The new theoretical findings are verified against empirical data obtained through manual deformation of chips, video recordings of the development of obstructed chips, and the use of a specially prepared grooved tool that imposes a predetermined side-curl on the chip.     

Chip geometries during high-speed machining for orthogonal cutting conditions

The originality of this work consists in taking photographs of chips during the cutting process for a large range of speeds. Contrary to methods usually used such as the quick stop in which root chips are analyzed after an abrupt interruption of the cutting, the proposed process photographs the chip geometry during its elaboration. An original device reproducing perfectly orthogonal cutting conditions is used because it allows a good accessibility to the zone of machining and reduces considerably the vibrations found in conventional machining tests. A large range of cutting velocities is investigated (from 17 to 60 m/s) for a middle hard steel (French Standards XC18). The experimental measures of the root chip geometry, more specifically the tool-chip contact length and the shear angle, are obtained from an analysis of the pictures obtained with a numerical high-speed camera. These geometrical characteristics of chips are studied for various cutting speeds, at the three rake angles −5, 0, +5° and for different depths of cut reaching 0.65 mm.     

Continuous and ultra-fine grained chip production with large strain machining

In this study, orthogonal cutting technique as a severe plastic deformation (SPD) method for producing chips with an ultra-fine grained microstructure and fair mechanical properties is investigated; further, it has been suggested that by controlling the cutting velocity and contact length between tool and material, it is possible to produce a severely deformed and continuous chip with unrestored microstructure even at high cutting velocities. Solution treated Al-6061 samples in plane strain condition were severely deformed through applying various cutting velocities (from 50 to 2230 mm/s) for three different rake angles (−5°, −10° and −20°) in fixed cutting parameters. Chip thickness, contact length, shear strain, and Vickers microhardness variations were examined for different samples and chip formation mechanism was discussed for different processing conditions. In addition, the microstructure of especial produced chips was studied using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results showed that during the dominance of seizure mechanism at the contact surface, microhardness and shear strain (as well as contact length) have inverse dependency upon the variation of the cutting velocity. The results are discussed by considering the heat-time effect contribution in the final microstructure and mechanical properties.     

Equidimensional fractal maps for indirect estimation of deformation damage in nonuniform aircraft alloys

This article describes the surface relief formation on Al single-crystal plates (sensors) with orientation {100}〈001〉 that were rigidly attached to weld specimens of aircraft alloy 2024 T351 during fatigue loading. Taking into account the nonuniform structure of the weld alloy, we located sensors in different zones of the weld specimens to receive information about the sites of strain localization and probability of destruction. The qualitative and quantitative information about the sensor relief was extracted by the online method automated on the basis of a stereomicroscope with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera attached to a personal computer by a video adapter and frame-grabber card. The quantitative and qualitative relief parameters are shown to correlate with the deformation prehistory of the weld specimens. Panoramic views were created and used for fractal analysis of deformation relief. Spatial distributions of information fractal dimension on the sensor surface for different numbers of cycles were plotted in the shape of contour lines with equal values (equidimensional maps). Equidimensional maps for sufficiently large sensors allow us to find strain localization sites in specimens and monitor their evolution in an online regimen.     

In-process high-speed photography applied to orthogonal turning

Material behaviour understanding is a basic pillar for the building of predictive models applied to machining processes and the majority of the formulated material flow rules that are intimately associated to strain and strain rate. The use of high-speed filming allows observing a sequence of frozen images focused on the chip formation area when machining steel in orthogonal turning tests. This article presents the set-up and images acquired over square grid marked tube work-pieces on 42CrMo4 steel. Variables such as chip geometry, shear angle, strain, strain rate, chip thickness, and tool vibration amplitude are measured. Information acquired by the displacement of flow patterns allows measuring of plastic variables. Strain and strain rate results are calculated and compared to analytical modelling results. Industrial machining speeds and feeds are analysed by means of short shutter times, high image acquisition rates, and high magnifications achieving a good compromise between image quality, recording continuity, and cost of the equipment and experiments.     

Extrusion-like chip formation mechanism and its role in suppressing void nucleation

The mechanism of chip formation transforms from concentrated shearing to an extrusion-like behavior at a critical combination of undeformed chip thickness and tool edge radius. Finite element analysis shows that material is removed by severe deviatoric stress within the boundary of elastic-plastic deformation during extrusion-like chip formation while this boundary is constantly redistributed to accommodate chip growth. Simultaneously, the deformation region is contained within active compressive components and hydrostatic pressure as chips are extruded. Under such operating conditions, void nucleation is prevented according to the Le-Chatelier's principle. Exceptional surface finish was produced experimentally through the extrusion-like chip formation mechanism.     

Dynamics of chip formation during orthogonal cutting of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V

Polished and etched disks of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V were machined in a series of continuous and interrupted orthogonal cutting tests on a specially adapted lathe. A high-speed imaging system with a microscope lens and strobed copper-vapour laser illumination system enabled direct observation of the chip formation zone at a recording rate of 24,000 frames/s. The chip formation cycle was recorded for cutting speeds from 4 to 140 m/min. Segmented chips were observed throughout. Image analysis of the recorded video sequences examined the resulting chip segment geometry, the segmentation frequency and the critical strain required to initiate shear band formation.     

Strain,strain rate and velocity fields determination at very high cutting speed

High speed imaging is used for the purpose of examining the strain and strain rate variations in the primary shear zone at cutting speed of 1020 m/min. Experimental investigation focused on flow pattern describing the severe plastic deformation zone where a general streamline model is employed to investigate the distribution of velocity. Strain and strain rate distribution are directly deduced from the experimental observation of a cross-section of chip obtained through a high-speed camera system. The strain and strain rate gradients were analyzed along several streamlines. A finite element method model based on a Lagrangian formulation has been used to corroborate the conclusion of the streamline model. It has been found that the simulation results are similar to the experimental observations with regards to the magnitude of the equivalent strain rate and cumulative plastic strain but slightly differ in the geometry of flow pattern.     

镁合金固相合成和回收的研究进展

概述了目前固态循环镁合金的几种常用方法，包括注塑成型，反复塑性加工和固相合成法。其中重点阐述了固相合成镁合金的原理，工艺过程及其存在的问题和发展前景。反映了固相合成镁合金是一种安全有效的循环镁合金方法。     

Characteristics of uncurled and reversely curled chip during orthogonal cutting

It has long been recognized that initially continuous chips are born curled. In this paper a new pattern of chip curl—reverse chip curl, named as chip down-curl, is observed during manufacturing of staggered integral high-finned tube using orthogonal planing with tools with flat rake face when rake angle is large enough and cutting thickness is small. With the increase of cutting thickness or decrease of rake angle, chips become uncurled and further increase of cutting thickness or decrease of rake angle leads to chip up-curl. The variations of chip curvature and conditions under which chips do not curl are obtained by experiments. The mechanisms of uncurled and reversely curled chip formation are investigated by analyzing microstructure of chip root. It is found that the uneven deformation that occurs on cross-section of chip results in reversely curled chip formation and no visible shear deformation that occurs on the primary shear zone of chip leads to uncurled chip formation.     

TC4铣削切屑形态与表面形貌特征

目的 对TC4铣削过程中锯齿状切屑的形成与对应产生的加工表面形貌特征进行研究,掌握钛合金TC4高速铣削加工切屑形态随铣削速度的变化规律,从而提高加工表面质量和效率。方法 基于有限元软件,建立钛合金TC4二维变厚度切削模型,通过仿真和铣削试验分析铣削速度对切屑形态的影响规律。利用超景深显微镜和PS50表面轮廓仪对TC4铣削过程中形成的切屑形态及工件加工表面形貌进行观测和分析,确定铣削加工TC4过程中铣削速度与切屑形态、工件表面形貌和表面粗糙度之间的关系。结果 铣削试验验证得出铣削力仿真值与试验值最大误差为9.86%,验证了二维变厚度切削模型的准确性。随着铣削速度从40 m/min增大到120 m/min,切屑形态由带状转变为锯齿状,且铣削力逐渐减小。同时,铣削速度由80 m/min增大到240 m/min时,切屑的锯齿化系数和剪切带内的剪切角均增大,而剪切带间距减小,TC4加工表面波纹加深、波纹间距变宽,并且伴随有大量韧窝出现,导致表面粗糙度值增大。结论 掌握锯齿状切屑几何特征与工件表面形貌随铣削速度的变化规律,以便在铣削加工TC4过程中对锯齿状切屑进行控制,对于提高工件加工表面质量和加...     

Ti—55合金中的热塑剪切带

研究了三种不同处理的Ｔｉ－５５合金在Ｈｏｐｋｉｎｓｏｎ压杆上高速冲击变形时产生的热塑剪切带。结果表明,三种不同处理的合金试样在不同应变率下出现两类型剪切带：形变剪切带和“白色”剪切带,它们是在不同应变阶段下形成的,对应“白色”剪切带有一应变突变。ＴＥＭ观察未发现“白色”剪切的内发生相变。孪生是该合金动态冲击时变形的重要方式。     

Observations on chip formation and acoustic emission in machining Ti–6Al–4V alloy

Orthogonal cutting tests were undertaken to investigate the mechanisms of chip formation for a Ti–6Al–4V alloy and to assess the influences of such on acoustic emission (AE). Within the range of conditions employed (cutting speed, v_c=0.25–3.0 m/s, feed, f=20–100 μm), saw-tooth chips were produced. A transition from aperiodic to periodic saw-tooth chip formation occurring with increases in cutting speed and/or feed. Examination of chips formed shortly after the instant of tool engagement, where the undeformed chip thickness is slightly greater than the minimum undeformed chip thickness, revealed a continuous chip characterised by the presence of fine lamellae on its free surface. In agreement with the consensus that shear localisation in machining Ti and its alloys is due to the occurrence of a thermo-plastic instability, the underside of saw-tooth segments formed at relatively high cutting speeds, exhibiting evidence of ductile fracture. Chips formed at lower cutting speeds suggest that cleavage is the mechanism of catastrophic failure, at least within the upper region of the primary shear zone. An additional characteristic of machining Ti–6Al–4V alloy at high cutting speeds is the occurrence of welding between the chip and the tool. Fracture of such welds appears to be the dominant source of AE. The results are discussed with reference to the machining of hardened steels, another class of materials from which saw-tooth chips are produced.