FEM to predict the effect of feed rate on surface roughness with cutting force during face milling of titanium alloy

Abstract

Finite element modeling (FEM) is considered a famous method belonging to the numerical simulation methods. First it is a dominant technique in structural mechanics. Hence, this paper is focused on the effect of feed rate (f) on surface roughness (Ra) and cutting force components (Fc,Ft) during the face-milling operation of the titanium alloy (Ti–6Al–4V). The design of experiments was used to conduct the experiments to evaluate the effect of the feed rate on the machining responses such as surface roughness and cutting force components using a face milling operation during the cutting process of the titanium alloy (Ti–6Al–4V). The tests are performed at several feed rates (f) while the axial depth of the cut and cutting speed remain constant in dry cutting conditions. The results showed that one could predict the surface roughness by measuring the feed cutting force instead of directly measuring the surface roughness experimentally through using the finite element method to build the model and to predict the surface roughness from the values of the feed cutting force. This is because a similar trend was found between the surface roughness and feed cutting force. Therefore, constructing a prediction model via finite element modeling (FEM) led to the conclusion that we can estimate feed cutting force and thus surface roughness.