A study on the cutting force and chip shrinkage coefficient in high-speed milling of A6061 aluminum alloy

In this paper, finite element (FE) simulation for high-speed milling of aluminum alloy was performed using a ductile fracture model with Mohr–Coulomb criterion proposed by Bai and Wierzbicki (BW). To verify the model, predicted cutting forces were compared to experimental results in the same cutting conditions. Then, further simulations were performed to estimate the cutting forces and chip shrinkage coefficients subjected to different cutting parameters such as cutting speeds, cutting depths, and clearance angles of a cutting tool. The obtained results were also used to determine optimal cutting parameters using the Taguchi method. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to investigate the influence percentage of each cutting parameter on cutting force and chip shrinkage coefficient. The simulation results showed that inclusion of strain rate in numerical model significantly improved the accuracy of estimated cutting force in comparison to experiment. The optimum values obtained for high-milling process were cutting speed 1000 m/min, cutting depth 1 mm, clearance angle 15°, and rake angle 4°.