SIMULATED ANNEALING TO ESTIMATE THE OPTIMAL CUTTING CONDITIONS FOR MINIMIZING SURFACE ROUGHNESS IN END MILLING Ti-6Al-4V

This study presents the estimation of the optimal effect of the radial rake angle of the tool, combined with cutting speed and feed in influencing the surface roughness result. Studies on optimization of cutting conditions for surface roughness in end milling involving radial rake angle are still lacking. Therefore, considering the radial rake angle, this study applied simulated annealing in determining the solution of the cutting conditions to obtain the minimum surface roughness when end milling Ti-6Al-4V. Considering a set of experimental machining data, the regression model is developed. The best regression model was considered to formulate the fitness function of the simulated annealing. It was recommended that the cutting conditions should be set at highest cutting speed, lowest feed and highest radial rake angle in order to achieve the minimum surface roughness of 0.1385 mu m. Subsequently, it was found that by using simulated annealing, the minimum surface roughness was much lower than the experimental sample data, regression modelling and response surface methodology technique by about 27%, 26% and 50%, respectively.