Theoretical and experimental investigations of tool wear in ultrasonic vibration-assisted turning of 304 austenitic stainless steel

The 304 austenitic stainless steel is used in a wide range of important industries such as industrial, food, medical, and furniture decoration, seeming the most widely used chromium-nickel stainless steel, but which machinability proves very poor, being a typical difficult cutting material. The tool wear phenomenon is very serious in the process of cutting and is not easy to acquire the splendid machining quality. For this reason, the ultrasonic vibration is introduced into turning to realize ultrasonic vibration-assisted turning (UAT) to solve the above problems in this study. This paper first proves that the ultrasonic vibration has a certain inhibitory effect on the tool wear by theoretical and simulation methods. Then, the influence of technological parameters on the tool wear is studied by experiments. The results show that there is an optimal range of the ultrasonic amplitude and the cutting speed for the UAT, and which has a significant inhibitory effect on the tool wear when the technological parameters are selected properly. The tool wear of conventional turning (CT) is more serious under the same technological parameters. In addition to the abrasive wear and the adhesive wear, the deformation and the collapse also occur, accompanied by obvious sticking substances, which reduce the service life of the cutting tool greatly and has a certain impact on the machining efficiency and the cost. Furthermore, the UAT can also achieve better-machined surface quality under the condition of technological parameters with the less tool wear.

Automated summary

This study proves that ultrasonic vibration has a certain inhibitory effect on tool wear. Through experiments, it is shown that ultrasonic vibration-assisted turning (UAT) has a significant inhibitory effect on tool wear when the technological parameters are properly selected. UAT can also achieve better-machined surface quality under the condition of less tool wear.