Integrated Simulation of Machine Tool and Process Interaction for Turning

The interaction between process and machine tool behaviour can lead to process instabilities in terms of self‐excited vibrations where the energy of the machine tool oscillation is generated by process excitation. The regenerative chatter effects lead to wavy surfaces on the work‐piece. This effect has been simulated for turning processes with an integrated simulation approach, which couples a time domain simulation model for the machine tool and the workpiece with an analytical turning model. In this paper a procedure is illustrated for coupling an FEA‐based 3‐dimensional turning model with the time domain model for the machine tool under consideration of the resulting workpiece surface. In comparison to an analytical approach for calculating the mechanical tool load, the 3D‐FEA‐model has the potential to determine the resulting cutting forces for even complex‐shaped tool geometries, e.g. a complicated chip breaker or a varying cutting edge radius on the main or minor cutting edge. As a matter of the huge model size the calculation time in particular for 3‐dimensional problems is comparatively long to analytical cutting force models. Therefore, in this paper an approach to reduce the calculation time by using characteristic diagrams for the calculated process forces in the FEA‐model is presented. The research has also been focused on the current major problem in the FEA‐based modelling that the thrust and feed forces are generally underestimated in the simulation.