Journal of Materials Processing Technology 183 (2007) 358362

Experimental cutting model of metal matrix composites (MMCs)

J.P. Davim a, , Jos e Silva a , A.M. Baptista b
a b

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal DEMEGI-Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal Received 17 January 2005; received in revised form 22 September 2006; accepted 10 October 2006

Abstract Metal matrix composites (MMCs) are important engineering materials with good performances for industry. This article presents an experimental physical model on the cutting process for MMCs (aluminium alloy reinforced with 20% of particulate silicon carbide-SiC). The turning experiments were carried out on MMCs extruded workpieces using polycrystalline diamond (PCD) cutting tools. The objective of this study is to evaluate the chip compression ratio (Rc ), chip deformation (), friction angle (), shear angle (), normal stress ( ) and shear stress ( ), under prexed cutting parameters (cutting velocity and feed rate). The experimental physical model was compared with the Merchant equation. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Orthogonal cutting; Merchant equation; Metal matrix composites (MMCs); Polycrystalline diamond (PCD)

1. Introduction Recently, the use of metal matrix composites (MMCs) has increased in various areas of science and technology due to their special mechanical and physical properties. MMCs are characterized by having a combination of light weight, very high strength and a high stiffness. Therefore, MMCs tend to replace conventional materials in various elds of application such as aeronautical, aerospace, automotive, mechanical engineering, as well as in other industries because of its own properties. As result of these properties and potential applications, a great necessity exits to understand the questions associated with the production and machining of such materials. Machining MMCs is a rather complex task owing to its heterogeneity and to the fact that reinforcements are extremely abrasive [16]. The machinability of MMCs reinforced with particles of SiC (20%) using PCD tools was studied having in consideration the evolution of the cutting time of the tool wear, the cutting forces and the surface roughness workpieces [13]. Later, was evaluated the performance of the CVD diamond tools in machining of these composites [4]. A machinability study of MMCs reinforced with particles of SiC (5%) using cemented carbide tools were studied having in consideration the tool wear and the surface roughness workpieces [5]. The optimization of cutting

parameters in this type of composites was makes using FEM models [6]. The orthogonal model, presented by Merchant (Fig. 1) can be used to approximate turning, and certain other single-point machining operations, as long as the feed in these operations is small relative to depth of cut [7,8]. The undeformed chip thickness (e) can be calculated from the cutting edge angle () and the feed rate (f) with the following equation: e = f sin e e (1)

The chip compression ratio, as dened by Merchant, is [7,8]: Rc = (2)

being e the chip thickness after cutting. The shear plane angle () can be calculated from the chip compression ratio by the following equation [7,9,10]: cos = arctan (3) Rc sin being the rake angle and Rc obtained by Eq. (2). From the cutting forces and the shear plane angle, the shear and normal stresses (N/mm2 ) along shear plane can be calculated [7,9,10]: = Fc cos Ft sin ce sin (4)

Corresponding author. E-mail address: pdavim@mec.ua.pt (J.P. Davim).

0924-0136/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2006.10.025

J.P. Davim et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 183 (2007) 358362

359

[7,9,10]: Nomenclature c e e f Fc Ft Rc width of cut undeformed chip thickness chip thickness after cutting feed rate cutting force thrust force chip compression ratio m = 1 ( ) 4 2 (7)

The mean friction angle () can be estimated from the cutting forces (Fc and Ft ) and the rake angle ( ) by the following equation [7,9,10]: = arctan = Fc sin + Ft cos Fc cos Ft sin (8)

Greek symbols cutting edge angle chip deformation shear plan angle m Merchant shear plane angle rake angle friction angle normal stress shear stress

The objective of this experimental work is to compare the results of the Merchant equation with the experimental cutting model during the turning MMCs with PCD cutting tools.

2. Materials and experimental details

Aluminium alloy reinforced with 20% of SiC particulates (A356/20/SiCpT6) has been tested. A typical microstructure of this material is shown in Fig. 2. The chemical composition of the A356 aluminium matrix is aluminium with 7.0% Si and 0.4% Mg. The average dimension of the SiC particles is about 20 m. The experiments were carried out using MMCs appropriate workpieces with a diameter of 60 mm and a length of 200 mm, using a PCD tool (TCMW 16T3 04 FP CD10). A type STGCL 2020 K16 tool holder was used. The tool geometry was as follows: rake angle 0 , clearance angle 7 , cutting edge angle 91 and cutting edge inclination angle 0 . A CNC lathe Kingsbury MHP 50 with 18 kW spindle power and a maximum spindle speed of 4500 rpm was used to perform the experiments. All the experiments were performed using a cutting uid (emulsion 1/10 with BP Microtrend 231 L), following a plan of tests with twelve combinations between three values of cutting velocity and four values of feed rate, according to Table 1. A constant depth of cut of 2 mm was used. A Kistler 9121 piezoelectric dynamometer with a charge amplier (model 5019) was used to acquire the cutting forces. Data acquisition was made through the charge amplier and a computer using the appropriate software (Dynoware by Kistler ). The chip thickness measurement was developed through a Mitutoyo digital micrometer with a range of 025 mm and a resolution of 0.001 mm.

Fc sin + Ft cos ce

sin

(5)

being Fc the cutting force (N), Ft the thrust force (N), c the width of cut (mm) and e the undeformed chip thickness (mm). The chip deformation () can be obtained from the values of Rc and [9]: = 1 + R2 c 2Rc sin Rc cos (6)

The shear plane angle () is the angle at which the shear stress equals the shear strength of the work material, and so the shear deformation occurs preferably at this angle. The shear plane angle can be determined by taking the derivative of the shear stress (Eq. (4)) with respect to and setting the derivative to zero (relative maximum of the function ), according to Merchant

Fig. 1. Orthogonal cutting model (a) chip compression and (b) Merchant model [7].

360

J.P. Davim et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 183 (2007) 358362

Fig. 3. Shear plane angle vs. chip compression ratio.

3. Results and discussion Taking into account the chip thickness value measured after the cutting operation on the metal matrix composite, it was possible to obtain the chip compression ratio (Rc ) (Eq. (2)), the shear plane angle () (Eq. (3)) and the chip deformation () (Eq. (6)), as presented in Table 2. In Fig. 3 it is possible to observe that the value of the shear plane angle () decreases with the increase of the chip compression ratio (Rc ). By linear regression for the shear plane angle () as a function of the chip compression ratio (Rc ), the following Eq. (9) has been obtained: = 46.08 9.54Rc ,
f (mm/rev) 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2

Fig. 2. Typical microstructure of A356/20/SiCp-T6.

Table 1 Cutting parameters used for tests Test 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 V (m/min) 50 50 50 50 100 100 100 100 200 200 200 200

R = 0.989

(9)

In Fig. 4, it is shown that the chip deformation () increases with the increase of the chip compression ratio (Rc ). Through linear regression the following Eq. (10) has been obtained for the chip deformation () as a function of the chip compression ratio (Rc ): = 0.916 + 0.798Rc , R = 0.999 (10)

From Eq. (7), concerning the Merchant model, it is possible to nd the value of the shear plane angle () by using the mean friction angle value (), obtained through the Eq. (8). This method allows a comparison to be made between the experimental values and those derived from the Merchant model. Table 3 presents the results obtained trough both methods.

Table 2 Values of chip compression ratio (Rc ), shear plane angle () and chip deformation () as a function of the cutting parameters Cutting velocity (m/min) 50 50 50 50 100 100 100 100 200 200 200 200 Feed (mm/rev) 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 Undeformed chip thickness (e) (mm) 0.050 0.100 0.150 0.200 0.050 0.100 0.150 0.200 0.050 0.100 0.150 0.200 Chip thickness after cutting (e ) (mm) 0.151 0.270 0.375 0.490 0.145 0.230 0.344 0.451 0.128 0.175 0.259 0.339 Chip compression ratio (Rc ) 3.02 2.70 2.50 2.45 2.89 2.30 2.29 2.26 2.56 1.75 1.73 1.70 Shear plane angle () ( ) 18.32 20.32 21.80 22.20 19.08 23.50 23.56 23.91 21.33 29.74 30.07 30.54 Chip deformation () 3.35 3.07 2.90 2.86 3.24 2.74 2.73 2.70 2.95 2.32 2.31 2.29

J.P. Davim et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 183 (2007) 358362 Table 3 Values of the friction angle (), shear plane angle () and Merchant shear plane angle (m ) as a function of the cutting parameters Cutting velocity (m/min) 50 50 50 50 100 100 100 100 200 200 200 200 Feed (mm/rev) 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 Friction angle () ( ) 34.65 33.90 33.01 32.30 40.83 36.93 34.83 32.72 41.74 37.11 33.60 30.91 Shear plane angle () ( ) 18.32 20.32 21.80 22.20 19.08 23.50 23.56 23.91 21.33 29.74 30.07 30.54

361

Merchant shear plane angle (m ) ( ) 27.67 28.05 28.50 28.85 24.58 26.54 27.58 28.64 24.13 26.45 28.20 29.54

Table 4 Values of the shear stress ( ) and normal stress ( ) as a function of the cutting parameters Cutting velocity (m/min) 50 50 50 50 100 100 100 100 200 200 200 200 Feed (mm/rev) 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 Shear stress ( ) (MPa) 400.63 329.23 310.98 300.45 355.66 319.82 296.96 284.68 346.03 297.92 286.06 277.61 Normal stress ( ) (MPa) 531.07 456.42 441.10 420.94 614.06 564.38 482.85 432.19 681.37 696.66 577.28 509.91

Fig. 4. Chip deformation vs. chip compression ratio.

In Fig. 5, the values for the shear plane angle () obtained by the two preceding methods are compared. It can be observed that in the Merchant model the shear plane angle () decreases with the increase of the ( ) value, where denotes the mean friction angle and the rake angle. It is observed that the Merchant model tends to over estimate the shear plane angle values in metal matrix composites cutting, with the exception for the cases of simultaneous use of severe cutting conditions (cutting speed and feedthree last lines of Table 3). In these cases, it seems that the effect of the reinforcement, tending to increase the friction coefcient between the chip and the tool, does not occur, due

to the easier sliding of the reinforcement particles inside the aluminium matrix. Through Eqs. (4) and (5) it is possible to derive the normal stress ( ) and the shear stress ( ) values, presented in Table 4. In Figs. 6 and 7 the evolution of the normal stress ( ) and the shear stress ( ) values is presented as a function of the feed for different cutting speeds. It is observed that the normal stress ( ) is always higher than the shear stress ( ) both tending to diminish when the feed increases. In the case of the normal stress ( ), it is observed that its value is always greater for

Fig. 5. Shear plane angle () vs. ( ). Comparison between the Merchant model and the experimental model results.

Fig. 6. Evolution of normal stress as a function of the cutting parameters.

362

J.P. Davim et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 183 (2007) 358362

The normal stress is always higher when compared with shear stress. Both stresses decreased with the increase of feed rate. For the same feed rate the normal stress is higher when higher cutting velocity is used. On the contrary, the shear stress slightly decreased with the cutting velocity. References
[1] J.P. Davim, A.M. Baptista, Relationship between cutting force and PCD cutting tool in machining silicon carbide reinforced aluminium, J. Mater. Process. Technol., Elsevier Sci. 100103 (2000) 417423. [2] J.P. Davim, Turning particulate metal matrix composites. Experimental study of the evolution the cutting forces, tool wear and workpiece surface roughness with the cutting time, J. Eng. Manuf., Proc. Instn. Mech. Eng. Part B 215 (2001) 371376. [3] J.P. Davim, A.M. Baptista, Cutting force, tool wear and surface nish in drilling metal matrix composites, J. Process Mech. Eng. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part E 215 (2001) 177183. [4] J.P. Davim, Diamond tool performance in machining metal-matrix composites, J. Mater. Process. Technol., Elsevier Science 128 (2002) 100105. [5] E. Kilic kap, O. C akir, M. Aksoy, A. Inan, Study of tool wear and surface roughness in machining of homogenized SiC-p reinforced aluminium metal matrix composite, J. Mater. Process. Technol., Elsevier Science 164-165 (2005) 862867. [6] M.S. El-Gallab, M.P. Sklad, Machining of aluminium/silicon carbide particulate metal matrix composites: part IV. Residual stress in machined workpiece, J. Mater. Process. Technol., Elsevier Science 152 (2004) 2334. [7] M.E. Merchant, Mechanics of metal cutting process. I-Orthogonal cutting and type 2 chip, J. Appl. Phys. 16 (5) (1945) 267275. [8] M.P. Groover, Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing Materials, Process and Systems, Prentice Hall International Editions, 1996, pp. 543563. [9] M.C. Shaw, Metal Cutting Principles, Oxford Science Publications, New York, 1984, pp. 1846. [10] G. Boothroyd, W.A. Knight, Fundamentals of Machining and Machine Tools, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1989, pp. 73108.

Fig. 7. Evolution of shear stress as a function of the cutting parameters.

higher velocity at the same feed ratio, than the shear stress ( ) the opposite trend is observed, but with very small differences. 4. Conclusions Correlations between the chip compression ratio and shear plane angle or chip deformation have been obtained in MMCs turning. The shear angle decreased with the chip compression ratio. On the contrary the chip deformation increased with chip compression ratio. The Merchant model gives, in general, an overestimation of the shear plane angle value in cutting of aluminium matrix composites. The exceptions are the cases of the simultaneous utilization of the more severe cutting parameters, especially higher cutting velocity.