Wear behavior of tool flank in the side milling of Ti6Al4V: An analytical model and experimental validation

Abstract

Due to the poor machinability of Ti6Al4V material, the cutting tool can easily suffer flank wear during the process of high-speed side milling, which reduces the tool life as well as the surface integrity of workpiece. Further, an effective method for predicting the flank wear of end mill during side milling of Ti6Al4V is lacking in the existing literature, which makes it difficult to improve the productivity of the overall process. To this end, in this study, a flank wear prediction model is constructed based on three main mechanisms: abrasive wear, adhesive wear, and diffusive wear. Subsequently, a normal stress model and temperature field model of wear land on the flank of end mill are established. Finally, these two models are incorporated in the flank wear model to obtain the variation rate of wear land width, which is regarded as a criterion to evaluate the reliability of the proposed flank wear prediction model of side mill. The prediction results are found to be in excellent agreement with the experimental results, which verifies the high prediction accuracy of the proposed model. Overall, this model can serve as a useful theoretical basis for the rational selection of tool geometry and cutting parameters.