An Analytical Model of Residual Stress for Flank Milling of Ti-6Al-4V

AbstractResidual stress is one of the most critical parameters in surface integrity, which has a great impact on fatigue life of the machined components. While the flank milling of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V has been widely applied to the manufacture of jet engine for its high productivity in aerospace industry, prediction of residual stress induced by this process is seldom reported. In this paper, an analytical model of residual stress is proposed, based on comprehensive analysis of the mechanical loading during flank milling. For the first time, the sequential discontinuous variable loading feature of flank milling is taken into consideration. An incremental elasto-plastic method followed by a relaxation procedure is used to get the stress-strain history of an arbitrary point in the subsurface so as to predict the residual stress retained in the workpiece after several loading cycles. We find that during the last phase in which the machined surface is generated, the main load comes from the plough effect of cutting edge as the uncut depth approaches zero. The simulation results indicate that the flank milled surface shows more compressive residual stress in the axial direction than in the feed direction. To validate the prediction, a series of cutting tests are conducted on Ti-6Al-4V using finish parameters and X-ray diffraction is utilized to obtain the residual stress

Computationally Efficient, Multi-Domain Hybrid Modeling of Surface Integrity in Machining and Related Thermomechanical Finishing Processes

In order to enable more widespread implementation of sophisticated process modeling, a novel, rapidly deployable multi-physics hybrid model of surface integrity in finishing operations is proposed. Rather than modeling detailed chip formation mechanics, as is common in numerical models, the proposed models integrates existing analytical and semi-empirical models of the plastic, elastic, thermal and thermodynamic domains. Using this approach, highly complex surface integrity phenomena such as residual stresses, grain size, phase composition, microhardness profile, etc. can be accurately predicted in a manner of seconds. It is envisioned that this highly efficient modeling scheme will drive new innovations in surface engineering

IN-SITU CHARACTERIZATION OF SURFACE QUALITY IN γ-TiAl AEROSPACE ALLOY MACHINING

The functional performance of critical aerospace components such as low-pressure turbine blades is highly dependent on both the material property and machining induced surface integrity. Many resources have been invested in developing novel metallic, ceramic, and composite materials, such as gamma-titanium aluminide (γ-TiAl), capable of improved product and process performance. However, while γ-TiAl is known for its excellent performance in high-temperature operating environments, it lacks the manufacturing science necessary to process them efficiently under manufacturing-specific thermomechanical regimes. Current finish machining efforts have resulted in poor surface integrity of the machined component with defects such as surface cracks, deformed lamellae, and strain hardening. This study adopted a novel in-situ high-speed characterization testbed to investigate the finish machining of titanium aluminide alloys under a dry cutting condition to address these challenges. The research findings provided insight into material response, good cutting parameter boundaries, process physics, crack initiation, and crack propagation mechanism. The workpiece sub-surface deformations were observed using a high-speed camera and optical microscope setup, providing insights into chip formation and surface morphology. Post-mortem analysis of the surface cracking modes and fracture depths estimation were recorded with the use of an upright microscope and scanning white light interferometry, In addition, a non-destructive evaluation (NDE) quality monitoring technique based on acoustic emission (AE) signals, wavelet transform, and deep neural networks (DNN) was developed to achieve a real-time total volume crack monitoring capability. This approach showed good classification accuracy of 80.83% using scalogram images, in-situ experimental data, and a VGG-19 pre-trained neural network, thereby establishing the significant potential for real-time quality monitoring in manufacturing processes. The findings from this present study set the tone for creating a digital process twin (DPT) framework capable of obtaining more aggressive yet reliable manufacturing parameters and monitoring techniques for processing turbine alloys and improving industry manufacturing performance and energy efficiency

Master of Science

thesisIn order to enable sustainable manufacturing, the indiscriminate use of cutting fluids in modern machining has to be tackled, given its environmental and economic impacts. A possible solution is the recent entrance of dry and near dry minimal quantity cooling and lubrication (MQC/L) machining. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of MQC/L, however, further studies need to be done. The three major functions of cutting fluids are to perform cooling, lubrication, and chip removal from the cutting zone. The main objective of this work is to understand how the tribological aspects (cutting forces, chip flow, tool-chip contact area), chip morphology, and surface roughness and surface integrity (residual stresses) are influenced by i) the application of different cutting fluid combinations in minimal quantities ii) the direction of application of the cutting fluid in the facing of AISI 1045 steel using an uncoated flat-faced carbide tool. A Minimal Quantity Cutting Fluid (MQCF) dispensing system was tested and implemented to evaluate the effects of differing fluid dispensing rates and target directions. It was found that the effects of targeted cutting fluid combinations on the tribological aspects were significant when compared to dry machining, although the variation in the tribological aspects was marginal amongst the different cutting fluid combinations. In contrast, directing the coolant on the flank face of the tool revealed some interesting results. Compressive residual stresses were observed when coolant was directed to the tool flank face as opposed to other cases, which generated tensile residual stresses in the machined subsurface. This suggests that localized and carefully chosen cutting fluid target direction and combination can enhance product performance by enhancing machining performance and surface integrity. In summary, this thesis presents the significance of targeted minimal cutting fluid application in relation to machining performance (especially surface integrity) under the given cutting conditions and provides several recommendations for future work

ENHANCED SURFACE INTEGRITY WITH THERMALLY STABLE RESIDUAL STRESS FIELDS AND NANOSTRUCTURES IN CRYOGENIC PROCESSING OF TITANIUM ALLOY TI-6AL-4V

Burnishing is a chipless finishing process used to improve surface integrity by severe plastic deformation (SPD) of surface asperities. As surface integrity in large measure defines the functional performance and fatigue life of aerospace alloys, burnishing is thus a means of increasing the fatigue life of critical components, such as turbine and compressor blades in gas turbine engines. Therefore, the primary objective of this dissertation is to characterize the burnishing-induced surface integrity of Ti-6Al-4V alloy in terms of the implemented processing parameters. As the impact of cooling mechanisms on surface integrity from SPD processing is largely unexplored, a particular emphasis was placed upon evaluating the influence of cryogenic cooling with liquid nitrogen in comparison to more conventional methodologies. Analysis of numerical and experimental results reveals that burnishing facilitates grain refinement via continuous dynamic recrystallization. Application of LN2 during SPD processing of Ti-6Al-4V alloy suppresses the growth of new grains, leading to the formation of near-surface nanostructures which exhibit increased microhardness and compressive residual stress fields. This is particularly true in cryogenic multipass burnishing, where successive tool passes utilizing lower working pressures generate thermally stable work hardened surface layers, uniform nano-level surface finishes, and significantly deeper layers of compressive residual stresses

Modeling and Optimal Design of Machining-Induced Residual Stresses in Aluminium Alloys Using a Fast Hierarchical Multiobjective Optimization Algorithm

The residual stresses induced during shaping and machining play an important role in determining the integrity and durability of metal components. An important issue of producing safety critical components is to find the machining parameters that create compressive surface stresses or minimise tensile surface stresses. In this paper, a systematic data-driven fuzzy modelling methodology is proposed, which allows constructing transparent fuzzy models considering both accuracy and interpretability attributes of fuzzy systems. The new method employs a hierarchical optimisation structure to improve the modelling efficiency, where two learning mechanisms cooperate together: NSGA-II is used to improve the model’s structure while the gradient descent method is used to optimise the numerical parameters. This hybrid approach is then successfully applied to the problem that concerns the prediction of machining induced residual stresses in aerospace aluminium alloys. Based on the developed reliable prediction models, NSGA-II is further applied to the multi-objective optimal design of aluminium alloys in a ‘reverse-engineering’ fashion. It is revealed that the optimal machining regimes to minimise the residual stress and the machining cost simultaneously can be successfully located

In-Situ Calibrated Modeling of Residual Stresses Induced in Machining under Various Cooling and Lubricating Environments

Although many functional characteristics, such as fatigue life and damage resistance depend on residual stresses, there are currently no industrially viable ‘Digital Process Twin’ models (DPTs) capable of efficiently and quickly predicting machining-induced stresses. By leveraging advances in ultra-high-speed in-situ experimental characterization of machining and finishing processes under plane strain (orthogonal/2D) conditions, we have developed a set of physics-based semi-analytical models to predict residual stress evolution in light of the extreme gradients of stress, strain and temperature, which are unique to these thermo-mechanical processes. Initial validation trials of this novel paradigm were carried out in Ti-6Al4V and AISI 4340 alloy steel. A variety dry, cryogenically cooled and oil lubricated conditions were evaluated to determine the model’s ability to capture the tribological changes induced due to lubrication and cooling. The preliminarily calibrated and validated model exhibited an average correlation of better than 20% between the predicted stresses and experimental data, with calculation times of less than a second. Based on such fast-acting DPTs, the authors envision future capabilities in pro-active surface engineering of advanced structural components (e.g., turbine blades)

Estimation of specific cutting energy in an S235 alloy for multi-directional ultrasonic vibration-assisted machining using the Finite Element Method

The objective of this work is to analyze the influence of the vibration-assisted turning process on the machinability of S235 carbon steel. During the experiments using this vibrational machining process, the vibrational amplitude and frequency of the cutting tool were adjusted to drive the tool tip in an elliptical or linear motion in the feed direction. Furthermore, a finite element analysis was deployed to investigate the mechanical response for different vibration-assisted cutting conditions. The results show how the specific cutting energy and the material’s machinability behave when using different operational cutting parameters, such as vibration frequency and tool tip motion in the x-axis, y-axis, and elliptical (x-y plane) motion. Then, the specific cutting energy and material’s machinability are compared with a conventional turning process, which helps to validate the finite element method (FEM) for the vibration-assisted process. As a result of the operating parameters used, the vibration-assisted machining process leads to a machinability improvement of up to 18% in S235 carbon steel. In particular, higher vibration frequencies were shown to increase the material’s machinability due to the specific cutting energy decrease. Therefore, the finite element method can be used to predict the vibration-assisted cutting and the specific cutting energy, based on predefined cutting parameters.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Modelling the Effects of Friction on Tool-Chip Interface Temperature During Orthogonal Cutting of Al6061-T6 Aluminium Alloy

© IEOM Society International - IEOM 2019In this work, finite element simulations based on the analytical model derived with the MATLAB software were used to establish the temperature fields within the cutting tool and tool-chip interface. The average tool-chip interface temperature model was simulated and the simulation results were compared with experimental results for validation. At a maximum cutting speed of 90 m/min, the maximum temperature obtained from the experiment was 410 oC, at same rake angle of 0o. However, the developed model predicted 490 oC under the same conditions. The higher value obtained by the model can be attributed to the negligence of heat losses to the surrounding by both convection and radiation modes, as an assumption in the formulated model. A similar trend of these results was also recorded for the case of rake angle and feed rate of 30o and 0.0635 mm/rev, respectively. It was observed that the simulation results and experimental measurements for the average tool-chip interface temperature agreed significantly.Final Published versio