An investigation on the influence of cutting speed and thermal softening in micro-cutting of single crystal

The influence of cutting speed and temperature softening was extensively investigated for conventional cutting process. However, this has not been addressed adequately for micro-cutting, especially of the single crystals, where the depth of cut is in the same range or even smaller than the average grain size of a polycrystalline aggregate. To this end, in this study, a three-dimensional finite-element model of orthogonal micro-cutting of b.c.c. beta-brass was developed. The behaviour of the single crystal was simulated using an enhanced modelling scheme for a strain-gradient crystal-plasticity theory accounting for the temperature softening, implemented through a VUMAT FORTRAN subroutine in ABAQUS/Explicit. The findings here were compared with those in the literature qualitatively. It was observed that while the cutting speed had limited effects on the chip formation mechanism of the single-crystal workpiece, the temperature softening had noteworthy effects in terms of the cutting force, chip shape, evolving strain gradients and activation of different slip systems.

Automated summary

In this study, a three-dimensional finite-element model was developed for simulating micro-cutting of single crystals. The results showed that cutting speed had limited effects on the chip formation mechanism, while temperature softening had significant effects on cutting force, chip shape, evolving strain gradients, and activation of different slip systems.