Importance of the contact interface definition in the numerical simulation of tool wear in metal cutting

Abstract

The present work proposes to emphasize the effects of the contact interface definition, both from the mechanical and thermal points of views, on the cutting tool wear simulation. A multi-step procedure is first developed to predict cutting tool wear by combining a pure thermal model to an Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) thermomechanical sub-model in order to properly predict the thermomechanical loadings applied onto the tool. Their changes are then assessed under different friction and heat partition conditions (constant and variable coefficients) and the resulting worn tool geometries are computed based on two wear models from the literature. It is shown that the implemented friction model plays a major role and that the predicted interface temperature can be drastically modified which is found to be especially critical as soon as a temperature dependent wear model is used.