Design of Chatter-Resistant Damped Boring Bars Using a Receptance Coupling Approach

Abstract

Deep hole boring using slender bars that have tuned mass dampers integrated within them make the boring process chatter vibration resistant. Dampers are usually designed using classical analytical solutions that presume the (un)damped boring bar which can be approximated by a single degree of freedom system, and the damper is placed at the free end. Since the free end is also the cutting end, analytical models may result in infeasible design solutions. To place optimally tuned dampers within boring bars, but away from the free end, this paper presents a receptance coupling approach in which the substructural receptances of the boring bar modelled as a cantilevered Euler–Bernoulli beam are combined with the substructural receptances of a damper modelled as a rigid mass integrated anywhere within the bar. The assembled and damped system response thus obtained is used to predict the chatter-free machining stability limit. Maximization of this limit is treated as the objective function to find the optimal mass, stiffness and damping of the absorber. Proposed solutions are first verified against other classical solutions for assumed placement of the absorber at the free end. Verified models then guide prototyping of a boring bar integrated with a damper placed away from its free end. Experiments demonstrate a ~100-fold improvement in chatter vibration free machining capability. The generalized methods presented herein can be easily extended to design and develop other damped and chatter-resistant tooling systems.