Heat Flow into the Tool in Cutting Super Alloy Inconel 718

Abstract

Cutting super alloy is a highly sensitive manufacturing process regarding the complex thermo-mechanical interactions in the cutting zone, which finally determine the capability of the process in order to reach economic requirements. The connection between the intensity of heat sources as well as heat partitions into the tool, work piece and chip is yet not fully understood. Thus heat flows and other thermal conditions in the cutting zone cannot be predicted satisfactory, though they influence the chip formation mechanics, the surface integrity, respectively functionality of the machined work piece as well as the tool wear and lifetime. Because of this deficit the ecological and economical design of the manufacturing process is still limited and often not knowledge based. The proposed paper presents a methodology in order to measure and predict heat flows respectively affiliated temperatures during cutting nickel-base super alloy (Inconel 718). The heat flows in the cutting zone are determined by infrared thermography and a further energy balance by post processing the thermal images. A FE-model for chip formation simulation, which is based on CEL (Coupled-Eulerian-Lagrange) formulation, was used to calculate the heat flows. Finally, the results of the simulation and the experiments were compared.