An investigation of notch wear on the bull-nose tool during laser-assisted milling AerMet100 steel

Abstract

Notch wear is one of the main tool failure modes when machining difficult-to-cut materials. Some experimental studies have confirmed that thermal-assisted machining is beneficial to suppress notch wear. However, the quantitative analysis model between the heating power and notch wear has not been reported. The stress distribution along the tool edge during laser-assisted milling with a bull-nose tool is calculated in this paper, and the influence of material softening is considered. Further, the critical laser power without notch wear generation is determined by calculating the stress concentration coefficient and comparing it with a critical value. A series of laser-assisted milling experiments are conducted to validate the critical laser power model, the results show the presented model is effective. Moreover, the effects of feed rate and radial cutting depth on the critical laser power are analyzed. This study can be further applied to optimize the laser power to minimize notch wear formation in the laser-assisted milling process.